Israelis Split on a Sharon Inquiry

Israel’s top leaders clashed Wednesday over a call for a state inquiry into the role of controversial former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, head of the Likud Bloc, opposed Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’ call for the investigation, opening wider a fissure in Israel’s already unstable coalition government.

Meanwhile, Sharon critics responded angrily to his contention in a four-hour speech on Tuesday that he fully informed Israeli leaders of his goals in orchestrating the invasion. Sharon, 59, also said he told leaders before Israeli troops even crossed the northern border that soldiers would eventually march into the Lebanese capital of Beirut.

Peres, among others, roundly disagreed: “Not only were we not told, but we were told the opposite.” Peres, leader of the Labor Party and an opponent of Sharon’s right-wing Likud Bloc, said the opposition was informed one day before the invasion that the military operation would last two or three days and not go deeper than 25 miles into Lebanon.

Added Labor Party Minister Chaim Bar-Lev: “Prime Minister Menachem Begin presented to us a plan, not for a war, not for a campaign, for an operation of 48 hours that was designed to push terrorists 40 kilometers from the Lebanese border.”