The Enigma That Is Sharon
The New York Times
March 17, 2002
ABOUT FACE
By JAMES BENNET
JERUSALEM
There are times, as they
bestride the carnage and chaos
here, that Ariel Sharon and Yasir
Arafat seem a little like Godzilla
and Mothra, roused from political
slumber to fight out their
antediluvian rivalry over the
vulnerable heads of a terrified
city. Indomitable and rubbery,
equipped with mysterious
powers, the two have laid waste to
offices, stores, airports and lives
- so far without mortally
wounding each other.
The question is whether either
can address their dispute with
anything besides savage blows.
After more than a year of
pressing Mr. Arafat to answer
that question, the Bush
administration has begun putting
it to Mr. Sharon.
Now, Prime Minister Sharon does not seem like a subtle
man. He is known to Israelis as "the Bulldozer," to
Palestinians as "the Butcher." But what Ariel Sharon
really wants - his endgame for the Middle East conflict -
is a mystery.
Some people here believe he would sign a far-reaching
peace agreement, if Mr. Arafat would first put a stop to all
Palestinian violence. Others insist he is executing a dark
master plan, provoking Palestinian violence to build a
pretext for occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
And some say he is making it up as he goes along,
scrambling daily for his political footing as he fends off his
chief rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Seeking support in the Arab world for a possible war on
Iraq, the Bush administration recoiled from a massive
Israeli assault on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and
demanded a withdrawal. The administration's special
envoy, Anthony C. Zinni, is here now, hoping to broker a
cease-fire.
In that effort, Mr. Sharon could be either ally or adversary,
and it is a testimony to his wiliness that it is impossible to
know for sure which he is. It is possible, in fact, even he is
not sure.
In Israeli politics, nobody is better credentialed to make
peace than Mr. Sharon, though that is because he seems
so unlikely to do so. He has repeatedly said he would
make "painful concessions" for peace, provided the
Palestinians first stopped all violence. They have not put
him to the test.
"Only the hawks can make peace," said Meir Sheetrit, the
Israeli minister of justice. "Sharon is the best person now
to make such a step."
It seems like a fantasy, in the shadow of the recent
violence here. But this Nixon-to-China - or Menachem-
Begin-to-Camp-David - scenario has its adherents in
Israel, who cite Mr. Sharon's stage of life and his searing
experience fighting Israel's war in Lebanon.
In fact, some settlers have long had a fear about Mr.
Sharon, their ardent supporter: Lebanon might have cost
him his nerve. "He feels that he wants to clear his name,"
said Shaul Goldstein, a settler leader.
As Israel's defense minister in 1982, Mr. Sharon led the
invasion into Lebanon. He was forced to resign after a
commission of inquiry held him indirectly responsible for
the slaughter, by Christian militiamen, of Palestinians in
two refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. Israeli protesters
called him a murderer. In his autobiography, "Warrior,"
Mr. Sharon, who rejects any blame, recalled that
residents of nearby kibbutzim would not give one of his
sons a lift to high school.
Mr. Goldstein proposed what he called a "theory of
conspiracy": Mr. Sharon's aides have exaggerated the
American pressure to give him an excuse to withdraw from
refugee camps that the army has invaded in the West
Bank. "Maybe Sharon does not want to go into the camps
because of Sabra and Shatila," he said.
Mr. Sharon is thinking about his place in history, many
analysts here believe. He does not trust the younger
generation to negotiate with the same regard for Israel's
security needs, they say.
Moving toward peace would cost Mr. Sharon his right-wing
support, but he is already less popular than Mr.
Netanyahu within his own party, the Likud. To be re-
elected next year he must have his party's backing.
A move toward peace could permit Mr. Sharon to lock
down the political center, and the idea has been floated
here of his running, with the dovish foreign minister,
Shimon Peres, at the head of a new fusion party. Last
week, he accepted without blinking the resignations of
two far-right ministers, over what they saw as a softening
toward the Palestinians.
"In terms of his willingness to do something bold and
sweeping, he's capable of doing that," said Amotz Asa-El,
the editor in chief of the international Jerusalem Post.
"That's how he earned his fame as a general." Those who
envision this, and those, like Mr. Goldstein, who fear it,
like to point out that Mr. Sharon evacuated the
settlements in Sinai after peace with Egypt.
What is missing from this scenario, they argue, is not
Nixon but China. A peace agreement is something Mr.
Sharon would "dream about," said Limor Livnat, another
minister in his government. But, she said, "the issue is
whether the Palestinians are willing."
The Ariel Sharon in this scenario is the one who declared
early this year, in reflecting on the fact that he was almost
74: "There was one thing I wanted to accomplish: to reach
a political settlement which will lead to peace with the
Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. That, I
thought, would be the last thing I would do in a political
life. Then I would have been glad to go back to the farm."
However, there is another, different Ariel Sharon. He is
the man who declared earlier this month: "The aim is to
increase the number of losses on the other side. Only
after they've been battered will we be able to conduct
talks." This is the Ariel Sharon who carried a club as a boy
to defend the family farm against Arab attacks and,
according to his critics, never put it down.
IN this darker scenario, Lebanon is not a lesson learned
but a template. While talking about concessions for peace
to con the Americans and his centrist allies, Mr. Sharon is
carefully executing a long- term plan to topple Mr. Arafat
and destroy the Palestinian Authority, according to those
who hold to this view.
Here is how this plan was supposedly executed: First, Mr.
Sharon provoked the Palestinian uprising in September
2000 by visiting a site holy to both Muslims and Jews in
the company of hundreds of police officers. That enabled
him to scuttle peace negotiations and be elected on a
promise of peace and security.
Then, by blockading Palestinian areas, selectively killing
suspected militants and attacking Palestinian security
forces, he guaranteed that chaos and terrorism would rise,
providing pretexts for ever more aggressive assaults. An
inexperienced American president, impressed by an older
general and intent on a war against terrorism, played into
his hands, this scenario goes.
Along the way, Mr. Sharon persuaded Israelis that they
had been dangerously naïve. Almost half of them,
according to a recent poll, now support the "transfer" of
Arabs out of the West Bank and Gaza, and three- quarters
support exiling Mr. Arafat. So, by constantly getting
tougher on the Palestinians, Mr. Sharon could please his
right-wing base and push the political center to the right
at the same time.
In this scenario, Mr. Sharon saw to it that China would
never want to receive him.
The echoes of Lebanon in the oratory and violence of
today are eerie. Then as now, Mr. Sharon complained that
Mr. Arafat had built a "kingdom of terror." Then as now,
he rejected public criticism as naïve at best and politically
motivated at worst, and a comfort to the enemy either way.
Then as now, Mr. Sharon chafed at American intervention
for a cease-fire, which he believed Mr. Arafat manipulated
to stall for time. He demanded that Mr. Arafat and his
henchmen leave Lebanon, and he achieved that, though
Israel became mired in an 18-year war of attrition.
The Ariel Sharon of the first scenario is the one who
declared recently that he envisioned the eventual creation
of a Palestinian state. That of the second scenario wrote,
in "Warrior," that Palestinians should find a political home
in "the Palestinian state of Jordan." As he wrote, "We must
say very clearly that our concern for our own survival does
not permit the establishment of a second Palestinian state
on the West Bank."
Mr. Arafat's record, of course, has supplied enough clues
to various, conflicting identities for a seminar on
scenarios, from terrorist to daring peace partner. Whether
any scenario is accurate, Mr. Sharon's stated conditions
for a possible agreement fall far short of offers Mr. Arafat
has already spurned.
Perhaps both men have changed, or can change. Or
perhaps one or both must fall before this brutal impasse
will break.
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