‘Bulldozer’ Sharon Again at Center of Controversy

In Israel, they call him The Bulldozer. The name captures both the hulking physicality of soldier-politician Ariel Sharon and his philosophical outlook on the world.

Through the tumultuous decades of Israel’s war-torn existence, Sharon has strode purposely into some of the nation’s bloodiest and most controversial contacts with Arabs, emerging sometimes as a hero, sometimes in disgrace. He was the darling of Prime Ministers David Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin, and served as an advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He has been a dangerous political foe to current Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

And for most of his adult life, Sharon has been the implacable enemy of the Palestinians.

“This man is connected with catastrophes for the Palestinians,” said Yasser Abed-Rabbo, minister of culture in the Palestinian Authority. “This man was responsible for the most brutal massacre in Palestinian history. This man also was responsible for the vast plan of confiscation of land in the West Bank.”

Sharon finds himself once again the center of controversy. Palestinians blame him for triggering the violence that has convulsed the region since Thursday. That was the day that Sharon, head of the Likud Party, led a delegation of right-wing Knesset members under heavy police guard into the sacred compound known as the Temple Mount, holy to Jews and Muslims, in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Sharon said he was going merely to assert Israel’s sovereignty over the site at a time when Barak is exploring possibilities of sharing control of it with the Palestinian Authority in an effort to achieve a final peace accord.

His critics inside Israel accused Sharon of callously exploiting the most sensitive site in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for political reasons. Sharon’s visit came the day after former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was cleared by Israel’s attorney general of any wrongdoing in a corruption investigation that had kept Netanyahu out of politics for the last year.

Netanyahu is expected to challenge Sharon for leadership of the Likud so that he can run against Barak in elections that might be held early next year. Polls of the Likud Central Committee, which must elect the next leader, show Netanyahu easily beating Sharon. Sharon, his critics said, went to the Temple Mount to solidify support from the right as he girds to battle Netanyahu.

But Palestinians saw Sharon’s visit as sheer provocation and were determined not to let it pass.

The Temple Mount, as it is known to Jews, is where two Jewish temples stood in antiquity. Arabs call the compound Haram al Sharif, or noble sanctuary. It is the third-holiest site in Islam and contains the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque. Sharon’s visit symbolized to many Palestinians what they perceive as an Israeli threat to wrest control of the compound, which is run by the Waqf, or Islamic Trust, through the final peace negotiations now inching toward some sort of resolution.

Riots broke out in the compound as Sharon’s visit ended. They spread quickly from Jerusalem’s Old City into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, then into Arab towns and villages across Israel. Palestinians are calling the deadly violence the “Al Aqsa intifada.”

“The provocation of the murderer, the criminal, the liar [Sharon] is what provoked the situation,” Col. Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Authority’s internal security forces in the West Bank, said Sunday.

Unrepentant, Sharon insisted Sunday in an interview with Y-net, the Internet site of the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot, that he bore no responsibility for the bloodshed.

“This is a comprehensive and planned campaign by [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat in order to apply pressure on Israel and the United States and has no relation to my visit on the Temple Mount,” he said.

It was the kind of tough talk that has been Sharon’s trademark throughout his checkered career. Born in British Mandatory Palestine, Sharon led one of the Jews’ elite units in their war of independence. In the 1950s, he led secret raids into Jordan, attacking Palestinian fighters. He flouted orders during the Sinai campaign in 1956 and captured the strategic Mitla pass in the Sinai Peninsula, then recaptured the pass in the 1967 Middle East War. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Sharon led the Israeli counterattack across the Suez Canal into Egypt that helped turn the tide of the war in the Jewish state’s favor.

In 1977, Menachem Begin made Sharon his minister of agriculture in charge of settlements. During his tenure, Sharon spread settlements across the West Bank. In 1981, Begin appointed Sharon his minister of defense, and Sharon became the architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. That tenure ended after Christian allies of Israel massacred hundreds of Palestinians in two Beirut refugee camps. An Israeli commission found Sharon indirectly responsible for failing to prevent the bloodshed, and he resigned as minister of defense.

But Sharon kept a Cabinet post and continued his campaign to ensure that the West Bank stayed in Israeli hands. The flamboyant former general has always delighted in touring settlements and strategic points in the territories with reporters, maps in hand. He has also often invited them to visit the heavily guarded home he maintains in the Muslim quarter of the Old City.

Sharon served in Netanyahu’s government as minister of national infrastructure, using the post to again strengthen Jewish settlements.