Sharon's Fierce Means to an End
Israeli Leader Sees No Contradiction in Fighting Militants, Pursuing Peace
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 13, 2003; Page A01
JERUSALEM, June 12 -- Ariel Sharon seldom makes a display of his emotions, but at a cabinet meeting this morning the Israeli prime minister fired a short burst of anger and contempt at the Palestinian leaders who are supposedly his peace partners.
Sharon called the Palestinians "crybabies" and said Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was "like a chick who hasn't grown his feathers," according to two participants. It was up to Israel to strike against terrorists, Sharon went on, until Abbas was willing and able to do so himself. And Sharon said he had made this exact point to President Bush at the Aqaba peace summit last week.
Sharon's remarks in the cabinet room reflect what he and those close to him have described as a two-pronged policy for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to his own public statements and interviews with advisers, analysts and three members of his cabinet, Sharon is determined to hammer Palestinian radicals militarily "to the bitter end," as he told the cabinet today, while taking cautious steps to meet his commitment to the U.S.-led diplomatic initiative known as the "road map" for peace.
The Israeli military struck again today, killing a Hamas militant in a crowded Gaza City thoroughfare in a missile attack on his car that also killed the man's wife, two daughters and three passersby, witnesses said. It was the fifth such attack in 48 hours on leaders of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, which has claimed responsibility for many suicide bomb attacks inside Israel, including Wednesday's attack that killed 17 people aboard a Jerusalem bus.
Tonight Palestinians killed an Israeli man buying coal in a West Bank village and opened fire on Jewish settlers in the Hebron area.
Sharon professes no contradiction between the two prongs of his policy, even as this week's violence threatens to destroy the road map at its inception. He argues that by eradicating radical groups such as Hamas he is helping Abbas, a political moderate who otherwise would face constant opposition and undermining by extremists. But Abbas's fate is a secondary consideration. Sharon's supreme priority, throughout his 55-year career in the army and politics, has been to protect Israel from its enemies.
"Sharon-watching has became an international sport," said Deputy Prime Minister Yosef Lapid. "But he's not a fickle man, and he doesn't change his views very often. He's not zigzagging."
Sharon's advisers insist that he has no desire to disappoint or anger Bush. But they deny claims that he had promised Bush he would refrain from assassinations like the ones Israel has targeted against Hamas leaders over the past three days.
They also say Sharon was not disturbed by Bush's public scolding of Israel after Tuesday's abortive attempt to kill Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi. "In Sharon's eyes, the language was very mild," said Ehud Olmert, a deputy prime minister who sits in the "inner cabinet" with Sharon, Lapid and three other senior ministers. "He didn't take it as a personal affront."
Still, on a deeper level Sharon and his colleagues are concerned that the Bush administration, in pressing the road map, has shifted from being Israel's intimate partner and supporter to a more neutral position, and that Sharon's personal relationship with Bush has been superceded by the president's newfound admiration for Abbas and for Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian finance minister.
"From November, I was trying to convince him to say no to Bush," said Natan Sharansky, the Jerusalem affairs minister who voted against the road map in a cabinet meeting last month because he believed it made too many concessions to the Palestinians without requiring them to first put a stop to terrorist attacks. Sharon agreed with him, Sharansky said, but "he told me, 'I am going to say yes, but -- and a very strong but.' "
Sharon, 75, is a retired general with a well-earned reputation as one of the most hawkish and relentless of Israel's leaders. He was the author of the abortive 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the architect behind the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which poses a major challenge to the two-state solution envisaged in the road map. Critics note that he has voted against every peace agreement Israel has signed over the past three decades. At the same time, analysts say Sharon has learned from past mistakes that he can only succeed with support from the Israeli political mainstream and with good relations with the United States.
The Israeli leader believed he had forged a special relationship with Bush, who appeared to accept Sharon's contention that, in launching a massive military campaign in the West Bank and Gaza in response to Palestinian violence over the past two years, Israel was fighting terrorism and engaging in self-defense.
Sharon and his commanders believe they gave the administration maximum support before and during the war in Iraq, showing restraint in fighting Palestinian radicals to deny Iraqi President Saddam Hussein an excuse to distract world attention. "Then out of the blue, after the war is over, America springs the road map," said Michael Oren, a military historian. "I think Sharon was surprised and disappointed."
Still, Sharon pushed the road map through a reluctant cabinet and attended last week's U.S.-led peace summit at Aqaba. There were times at the summit, one Israeli official said, when Bush seemed to side with the Palestinians, insisting that Israel release more of the funds it has withheld from the Palestinian Authority and help Abbas and his security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, establish authority over the territories.
But Sharon felt let down after Aqaba when Abbas insisted he would seek a negotiated cease-fire with Hamas and other groups even after the radicals rejected the proposal and launched new attacks against Israelis. He was especially upset, said spokesman Ranaan Gissin, after a young couple were found stabbed to death and mutilated by unknown attackers in a Jerusalem forest the day after the summit. Police called it a terrorist act. Three days later, Palestinian gunmen killed five Israeli soldiers in attacks in Gaza and the West Bank city of Hebron.
"The man can operate under fire better than any other politician I've ever seen," said Gissin. "But the one thing that drives him crazy is this indiscriminate killing of innocent people. When we kill civilians, it's because we're fighting a war in a densely populated area, but we don't target them. Sharon can be surprisingly flexible and bend over backwards, but we're not sacrificial lambs."
The missile attack on Rantisi, from which the Hamas leader narrowly escaped, was not undertaken to sabotage the road map or undermine Abbas, Sharon and his cabinet colleagues have insisted. But it did sabotage Abbas's efforts to achieve a cease-fire with Palestinian radicals. The army and intelligence agencies had warned Sharon that such a truce would only be temporary and give Hamas and other radical groups, which have been hit hard by Israeli forces during the past year, time to regroup, rearm and prepare for another round of attacks.
Officials here confirmed that Dov Weisglass, Sharon's chief of staff, had assured national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that Israel would only target "ticking bombs" -- Palestinian operatives who were being dispatched to conduct specific attacks against Israelis. But in the past few days, Israel's definition of a ticking bomb was expanded to include Rantisi and other Hamas leaders and activists.
After Rice expressed concern in a phone call to Weisglass Tuesday, Israel flooded her office with material seeking to show that Rantisi was a pivotal figure in Hamas's violent campaign.
The attack also shored up Sharon's support among conservative Israelis, who have grown restive and disaffected over his commitment to the road map.
"You can view the Rantisi attack as a way of telling the Americans, 'We're not in your pocket and we'll do what we have to protect our security interests,' " said Oren.
But Yosef Alpher, an independent analyst, said Sharon had damaged his credibility with the United States. "The attack on Rantisi was a mistake any way you cut it," said Alpher. "You can't have it both ways. If you sign on to the road map process and agree to give [Abbas] a chance, then you have to show restraint. If, on the other hand, you think its all a sham and that he is impotent, then don't sign on in the first place."
Today's Israeli missile attack in Gaza City killed Yasser Taha, a senior Hamas militant wanted by Israel, and his family. The army later apologized for the civilian deaths, saying it was unaware that Taha's wife and two daughters were in the car.
Witnesses said three missiles struck the vehicle, which burst into flames. As bystanders rushed to the burning wreck to help the victims, a fourth rocket smashed into the car, injuring more civilians. Airstrikes have killed 23 Palestinians this week, most of them civilians, according to witnesses and medical officials.
Taha came from a well-known Gaza family. His father, Mohammed Taha, 65, is a former university teacher and a founder of Hamas. Three of his brothers were said to be activists in the organization.
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