Arik - The Life Of Ariel Sharon (65 page)

It was a lovely sunny day. There were the shiny limousines, the uniformed outriders, the helicopters above. I must have said something about how nice it all was, when suddenly he says, “Don’t get too enthusiastic: they exiled us from Eretz Yisrael.” I honestly didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who exiled us?” “The Romans,” he says. “What’s that got to do with this?” I asked. “It’s the same thing …”

This was a serious conversation; not some kind of charade or joke. It was the first time that I saw he was looking at things differently. Later I was to see it again, with the Americans and in other diplomatic encounters. He was looking three thousand years backward and thousands of years forward. He was looking at himself as just one link in the chain of Jewish history. His task was to carry it through his term and hand on the burden. He felt it on his shoulders. For me, it was completely unexpected.

I told him the slogan. He looked at me for a long moment; he didn’t say anything. I was alone with him. And then he said, “Go with it.” I asked him if he was sure he knew what it entailed. He said, “I know. Go with it.”

No, we weren’t duping the voters. Israelis were looking for hope. The situation was beyond despair. Arafat was the demon, which helped Arik enormously. But basically the people don’t want endless war. The Jewish dream in Eretz Yisrael is to bash the
Arabs and to give back the territories! That was my point of departure. Only a strong and charismatic leader can deliver that dream. He’s a huge leader, and if he believes in it—and in my heart I believe he wants peace—that’s what the people want: a leader who can bring them peace and quiet. Now, that’s a message you can express in a hundred pages, or you can say it in five words. I knew it would raise eyebrows, and I knew some people would dismiss it as merely cynical. I’m an image person myself, not an agenda person. But I am saying absolutely unequivocally that when we discussed the significance of the image-changing slogan “Only Sharon will bring peace,” it was entirely clear to me, and to him, that this was not just an election slogan.
⁴⁶

^a
 Barak says Sharon was directly responsible for his promotion to general, against the wishes of the then chief of staff, Rafael Eitan.

^b
 Down from thirty-two in the previous election.

^c
 This prominent journalist and social commentator later became a politician himself: he was elected to the Knesset in 2009 as a member of the
Labor Party.

^d
 Literally, Ze’ev’s Fortress, after the founder of the Revisionist Party, which eventually evolved into the Likud, Ze’ev Jabotinsky.

^e
 Barak’s government initially comprised One Israel (Labor), 26; Shas, 17; Meretz, 10; Center Party, 6; National Religious Party, 5; United Torah Judaism, 5;
Yisrael B’Aliya, 4; One Nation, 2. In addition, it could count on the votes of the 10 Arab MKs in support of its peace moves.

^f
 In a formal statement that day in the Knesset, required by protocol, Speaker Avrum Burg announced that Sharon was leader of the opposition. New legislation had been passed recognizing the leader of the opposition as an official state officeholder, with attendant rights and privileges. “I have the honor of informing the Knesset that, in accordance with Section 11 of the
Knesset Law, the Likud faction, which is the largest opposition faction, has informed me that Ariel Sharon, MK, is leader of the opposition. Wherefore I hereby announce that Ariel Sharon, MK, is leader of the opposition. My congratulations, sir, on your maiden speech.” Sharon replied with grace, laced with his usual irony. “Mr. Speaker, I thank you. Even though it will only be for a short time, I am happy to hold this title” (Speaker’s announcement,
Knesset Record,
July 31, 2000).

^g
 Netanyahu’s brush with the criminal law involved a removals contractor cum handyman cum political activist, Yigal Amedi. He had been performing various removals assignments and other odd jobs for the Netanyahus ever since their return from Bibi’s service as ambassador to the UN in 1988. But he had never been paid. When Netanyahu lost the election, Amedi submitted a bill to the Prime Minister’s Office for close to half a million shekels ($125,000).

The suspicion was that Amedi’s various attempts over the years to wheedle from the Netanyahus various job placements and recommendations for his relations and friends were his reason for not asking to be paid. Amedi turned state’s evidence and poured out a tale full of bitter recriminations to the police. In the course of the investigation it also turned out that he and Sara had hauled off hundreds of valuable gifts given to Netanyahu in his official capacity (and therefore the property of the state) and had stored them in a warehouse.

There was not much evidence that the Netanyahus had actually helped Amedi. Still, the Israeli law of bribery incorporated the principle enshrined in Ecclesiastes 11:1: “Cast thy bread upon the waters, for after a long time thou shalt find it again.” This meant that no specific act of give-and-take had to be shown, as long as a general criminal intention could be proven. But in the Netanyahus’ case it could not, the attorney general ruled.

^h
 Or the police steered him clear; this point was never clarified.

ⁱ
 The proximity of the anniversary of that event exacerbated Palestinian resentment over the visit, both in the Palestinian press and in the street.

^j
 The killer turned himself in to the Palestinian authorities, who immediately announced that he was of unsound mind.

^k
 The IDF appeared to accept responsibility at the time. But an Israeli government inquiry concluded in May 2013 that Mohammed was not in fact shot in the incident. In France, a media analyst was convicted of defamation in June 2013 for accusing France-2 TV of staging the death of Mohammed.

^l
 See p. 205.

^m
 “And another thing,” Schiff added, “a nation at war cannot be run by
mothers’ organizations.” That was the veteran defense analyst’s somewhat sour reference to a women’s group called Four Mothers that had lobbied vigorously in favor of withdrawal from Lebanon. The unilateralism of that withdrawal and the undignified way it was carried out still rankled with many in the defense community, and Schiff was reflecting this. The northern border had been basically quiet following the pullout in April. But on October 7 a Hezbollah raiding party crossed into Israel and kidnapped three soldiers patrolling in their jeep. Barak, embroiled in the intifada, massed forces in the north and laid the blame on Syria. In the event, though, there was no Israeli military response.

ⁿ
 The commission worked for five months and presented its findings and recommendations in April to the new president of the
United States, who passed them on to the new prime minister of Israel.

For Ariel Sharon, they were worth waiting for. “The Sharon visit did not cause the “Al-Aqsa Intifada,” the panel wrote. It was not a blanket exoneration. There was plenty of criticism of Sharon and of Barak, and indeed of Arafat. The commission did not buy the Israeli line that Arafat had preplanned the intifada, but it accepted that Arafat did nothing to curb the violence once it had erupted.

^o
 “You’ll have to wait for my book,” Netanyahu replied, when asked in an interview for this book to explain his decision not to run against Sharon.

Omri Sharon insisted later that throughout these dramatic weeks his father never ceased to hope and even to expect that Netanyahu would withdraw in the end rather than stand and fight. But
Yossi Verter of
Haaretz,
writing at the time, described Sharon as a man on a roller coaster. “Talking to him a few days ago, after the ‘welcome’ he received from the Likud central committee, one encountered a bitter and frustrated leader. Everyone was lining up with Bibi; Sharon was alone and abandoned, staring defeat in the face. Yesterday, he was a different man. ‘I kept telling you all that it would be me who runs against Barak,’ he crowed. ‘But I saw out of the corner of my eye the pitying shrugs or malicious grins that my words elicited.’ ” Sharon, wrote Verter, was “like a mortgage defaulter about to be evicted from his home who suddenly wins the lottery.”

^p
 Israel built a security fence around the Gaza Strip in 1994, at the insistent instigation of the IDF general then commanding the southern front, Matan Vilnai, who had since left the army and become a
Labor Party politician. That fence, erected precisely along the pre-1967 borderline, proved effective throughout the intifada in preventing terrorist incursions from Gaza.

^q
 The
haredim
numbered an estimated 10 percent of eligible voters in the 2001 election. It is hard to be precise about the size, especially in electoral terms, of the various groupings that make up Israel’s highly sectorized society. Not every “settler” or “Russian” or
haredi
or Israeli Arab necessarily votes with his sector, and these classifications themselves are not airtight. Among most self-defined
haredim,
though, voting “discipline” is strong—the rabbis choose the candidates—and there are relatively few deviants. The 2001 election was to be particularly noteworthy in this respect: whereas the average nationwide turnout was 61.2 percent (the lowest ever in an Israeli election), turnout in
haredi
areas topped 90 percent, meaning that the effective
haredi
proportion of the vote was around 15 percent.
Haredi
political power looks likely to grow: in 2009, 30 percent of Jewish first-grade
children attended
haredi
schools.

^r
 Arabs accounted for 12.3 percent of eligible voters, according to Central Bureau of Statistics figures. As with the
haredim,
this figure was significantly lower than their overall percentage of the population, because of the relatively high proportion of
children in the Arab and
haredi
communities.