A Warrior's Legacy
Brilliant tactician,indomitable adversary, Ariel Sharon was a lion in defense of his nation
Jerusalem--Except for David Ben-Gurion, who shepherded the State of Israel into being, no one in modern times transformed this country as much as Ariel Sharon did. And no Israeli leader transformed himself as did the legendary fighter once he finally, after a half century of great deeds and misdeeds on the battlefield, became prime minister. Even as Sharon lay in a hospital bed at the edge of the capital, reportedly suffering irreversible brain damage after a massive hemorrhage last week, the historic changes--largely for the better--most recently wrought by this most willful of men were visible in every direction.
The streets and eateries of downtown Jerusalem were filled with unfrightened people. Merchants hustled to keep up with the trade. When Sharon took power nearly five years ago, Israel's cities would empty at dusk for fear of suicide bombers. In the prime minister's office, the new, emergency head of state, veteran politician Ehud Olmert, was taking over the newly dominant political party, Kadima (Forward), that Sharon created single-handedly. Kadima represents a movement that, until Sharon remade the Israeli political spectrum, existed here only in theory and dreams: the center. When Sharon won election on Feb. 6, 2001, the country's political life was, as ever, polarized between right and left, and he headed the then dominant Likud--a party he also brought into being, nearly three decades earlier.
On the Mediterranean coast, in the Gaza Strip, there are no Israeli settlers and no Israeli soldiers present anymore. The hellish occupation, begun with the 1967 Six-Day War, is over; for better or for worse, Gaza is now fully in the hands of its Palestinian population. Five years ago, it was still part of "Greater Israel,"and the last person anybody thought would ever give it up was Ariel Sharon. Slicing along the edges of the West Bank, a concrete and chain-link security barrier is taking rough shape as the border between Israel and a future state of Palestine. Hated by Palestinians as the "apartheid wall," it has taken land and disrupted life for thousands of them. But the wall has prevented suicide bombers from entering Israel, and it points the way to large-scale settlement evacuation and the final end of the occupation. Before Sharon took office, the wall existed only on paper.
Outsize.In a deep coma in the seventh-floor neurosurgery ward of Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, his two sons nearby, Sharon, 77, can no longer fasten his iron grip on the country that had come to see him as indispensable, irreplaceable, a benevolent dictator not so much loved as revered. An outsize figure of fierce determination, he was a bold and cunning defender of his tiny nation in a hostile, dangerous part of the world. "We have no one who is strong like him,"said Yosef Zakaim, 67, whose jewelry store windows had to be replaced twice after terrorist bombings a few years ago. "He's been like a grandfather. People trusted him. The country misses him."
Yet Israel without Sharon is not adrift, not facing the abyss, not by any means. It is still fighting with the Palestinians, but the raging guerrilla war that Sharon faced when he took office has ebbed. The economy, flat on its back five years ago, is fairly booming, although the ranks of Israel's poor have grown. Going into the March 28 election, the first opinion polls taken after Sharon's incapacitation show Kadima--even led by Olmert--holding a commanding lead.
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