The blind love of the people

By Gideon Levy

A concept is born - the "Sharon legacy." Like its predecessor, the
"Rabin legacy," it too will present a persona entirely different
from the real person. Therefore, a moment before Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon becomes the "Sharon legacy," the hero of peace and
the disengagement who, had he only continued in his role a little
longer, would have brought peace to Israel - we would do well to
sketch his non-mythical persona, without mincing words.

Perhaps the most influential leader since David Ben-Gurion, Sharon
was the cause of many of the political and security problems now
facing Israel. This must be said honestly, even now. The new
Sharon, who has earned the respect of a large number of Israelis
and of most of the countries in the world, tried in his twilight
years only to repair some of the historical mistakes into which he
led the country during his life. The settlement project, the
strengthening of Hamas and the emergence of Hezbollah as a
threatening and significant factor in Lebanon - all owe a great
debt to Sharon's policies.

The belated enthusiasm for Sharon is therefore enthusiasm for a
clever leader, who tried toward the end of his life to extricate
himself somehow from situations that a wise leader would never
have gotten into in the first place. He is deserving of respect
for this belated change, for his recognition of the limitations of
power, for his awareness of the harmfulness of the settlement
project and the criminality of the occupation, but it is
impossible to ignore his critical role in creating all of these.
Because he remained very faithful to his basic worldview, which
maintains that there is no chance of peace with the Arabs, we
cannot also present him as a "hero of peace" now - just as it was
an exaggeration to turn the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin into
such a hero after his assassination.

The old Sharon was the one who led the country into the most
superfluous and harmful of Israel's wars, the Lebanon War, and
would not even raise his hand in favor of the peace agreement with
Jordan - the easiest and most convenient of such agreements, from
Israel's point of view. The new Sharon blatantly ignored the
Palestinians. In critical moves such as the disengagement or the
construction of the separation fence, he ignored their existence,
their needs and their desires. He did not attempt to achieve peace
with them, because he did not for a moment believe that it was
possible.

The Sharon legacy will recall mainly the disengagement, not
Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin in 2002, nor the retaliation
raid in Qibya in 1953, nor the other violent and superfluous
operations - just as the Rabin legacy remembers mainly the Oslo
Accord. Perhaps that is a lesson for our future leaders: Eternal
glory is achieved via peace agreements, not via glorious
battlefields.

But even those who believe that Sharon intended to evacuate more
settlements cannot ignore the fact that this was a matter of
removing some of the rotten fruits of his policy. The historian
will remember all of Sharon's insane maps, the "settlement blocs,"
the "legal" and "illegal" outposts, for which he may have been
more responsible than any other Israeli, all of which were
designed to prevent any possibility of a just agreement with the
Palestinians.

But if on the subject of the settlements Sharon tried to repair
the damage he caused - that is not the case in other areas.
Israel's two bitterest enemies at present, Hamas and Hezbollah,
achieved their positions of strength to no small degree thanks to
him. During that same accursed war, the Lebanon War, which is
attributed to him, Sharon brought about the removal of the
Palestinians from South Lebanon, and their replacement by
Hezbollah.

He can take credit for an amazingly similar outcome years later
vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority, when he preferred the
religious fundamentalists to the moderate secular camp. The new
Sharon, who is beloved and esteemed, is responsible for the
collapse of the PA as the central entity in the occupied
territories, and to its replacement - whether by Hamas, which now
threatens to assume control of the government, or by the anarchy
that threatens to destroy everything.

During all his years as prime minister, Sharon refrained from
granting any support to the leaders of the PA, so that they could
establish their rule under the Israeli occupation. Even when the
late PA chair Yasser Arafat died, Sharon did not allow his
moderate successor to present any significant achievement to his
people: neither the release of prisoners, nor a significant
increase in freedom of movement, nor taking the Palestinian people
into consideration when planning the route of the fence, nor even
participation in the beginning of negotiations. Instead, Sharon's
Israel did everything in its power to bring about the destruction
of the PA and to humiliate it in the eyes of its people. A violent
Israeli military effort, which reached its peak in Operation
Defensive Shield, caused the collapse of all the PA mechanisms:
Police stations that were meant to stabilize the government and to
fight terror were bombed mercilessly, and all the mechanisms of
the PA and its government offices were destroyed one after
another. In the political and social vacuum that resulted, Hamas
could only flourish.

The last chapter of his political life saw the eruption of the
Iranian threat, perhaps the most dangerous of all. How ironic it
is that this threat, which emphasizes the irrelevance of territory
in maintaining the country's security, appeared in the waning days
of the man who all his life believed that territory is the be-all
and end-all.

A moment before Sharon enters the national pantheon, we would do well to remember that at best, we are losing a courageous fighter
and a clever statesman rather than a wise one, who caused a great
deal of damage and is now leaving the stage enveloped by the blind
love of his people.