Peace or war : Sharon's legacy of controversy

Extract

[...] His military logic and his policy of retaliation generated greater levels of Palestinian resentment which sparked new forms of resistance. Hamas was born largely on the basis of his brutal interventions in the West Bank and Gaza. For most of his career, Arabs regarded him as a butcher responsible for cold-blooded attacks on civilians. That's why it will be hard for many non-Israelis, and especially the Palestinians, to accept the notion than Sharon's departure could be bad for peace. The military part of Sharon's life was an important element of his education as a leader. [...]

[...] He also decided to build a security fence separating Israel from the West Bank fence protecting Israel from Gaza was already in place) in answer to the demographic realities (namely the prospect that as Palestinians multiplied, Jews would become a minority in their country) and to a political reality: most Israelis had abandoned the dream of a Greater Israel at the cost of insecurity and conflict. There are two opposing visions of Sharon's legacy on this point. On one side, there are those who think that his impositions of new measures separating Israelis from Palestinians and Palestinians from each other have severely damaged the possibility that a sovereign Palestinian state will emerge anytime soon. [...]

[...] Peace or war: Sharon's legacy of controversy Introduction The post-Sharon era began abruptly on January when the 77-year-old Prime Minister of Israel suffered a massive stroke while visiting his ranch in the northern part of Israel (Negev). Everybody seemed to agree that his passing from the political scene would change everything, opening up a political vacuum and jeopardizing prospects for progress between the Palestinians and Israelis. In general terms, after Sharon's departure, the projections for war and peace have to be recalculated. [...]

[...] But now it had a new shade of meaning. He could destroy and he could build, and sometimes he did both at once.” The returning of all occupied land to the Palestinians and the stopping of the Jewish settlements have been some of the thorniest aspects of the peace negotiations and they are big obstacles to the implementation of the road map (the international plan to move towards the establishment of a Palestinian State). In 2000, at the end of his period as a legislator and politician, Sharon's provocative walk on Jerusalem's Temple Mount (home for more than a thousand years of the Dome of the Rock and Al Alqsa Mosques) it said to have initiated the second intifada. [...]

[...] For these actions, and others that he accomplished during his military career, he was generally considered a war hero. Israeli perception was a mix of concern that he was too keen to plunge into battle without regard to collateral damage, and the impression that he caused fear in Israel's enemies and always emerged victorious. The legacy of this part of Sharon's life is paradoxical. On one side, Sharon attained the people's respect that comes with leading men through dire circumstances and prevailing. [...]