WHEN SHARON WAS ELECTED PRIME MINISTER
in 2001,
TIME noted his win: "Ariel Sharon - Bags biggest landslide in Israeli history. Transformed from a hawk to a phoenix." Our coverage over the years traces the transformation of "the Bulldozer" from warrior to peacemaker. Some excerpts and links:
Even for a parliament that is notoriously rowdy and undisciplined, one session of the Israeli Knesset last week was unusual. Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, who is known as his country's 'settlement czar,' gleefully baited and ridiculed opposition members who attacked the Cabinet's decision to establish a new Jewish settlement at Elon Moreh on the occupied West Bank.
From Strange Way to Seek Peace
Jun. 25, 1979
Defense Minister Ariel ('Arik') Sharon, 54, is the undisputed architect of Israel's bombing raids into central Lebanon last week. If he is not the most powerful man in Israel today, he is second only to Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Sharon covets Begin's job. 'Arik would sacrifice everything, and I mean everything, to get the Prime Minister's post,' says an Israeli general.
From Architect of Toughness
May 3, 1982
A former major general, Sharon is frequently called 'the Bulldozer.' It suits both his girth (5 ft. 6 in., 235 lbs.) and his autocratic style. He inspires extremes of emotion. To his admirers, especially his troops, he is a brave and brilliant field commander who is not afraid to take risks, even at his peril. To his critics, among them many of his generals and Cabinet colleagues, he is an arrogant and dangerously ambitious megalomaniac with little or no respect for opposing points of view, much less democratic process.
From Subtle like a Bulldozer
By Marguerite Johnson
Jun. 21, 1982
The man who was most vehemently attacked over the question of Israel's culpability for the massacre was not the Prime Minister, although he received his share of censure, but Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, 54, who had directed his country's forces as they cooperated in the attack on the refugee camps. A former combat general, the tough and aggressive Sharon had long wanted to sweep every vestige of the P.L.O. out of Lebanon. He was the driving force in Menachem Begin's Cabinet behind the invasion of Lebanon, often acting on his own without the approval of his colleagues.
From Crisis of Conscience
By William E. Smith
Oct. 4, 1982
After four months of testimony and deliberation, the Israeli commission last week delivered its report on the Beirut massacre, and it proved to be a stinging indictment of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and several military officials, concluding that they shared an 'indirect' responsibility for what happened in the Beirut camps. The report assigned only a 'certain degree' of blame to Prime Minister Menachem Begin, but it recommended that Sharon either resign or be dismissed.
From The Verdict Is Guilty
By William E. Smith
Feb. 21, 1983
Sharon has charged that TIME magazine libeled him in a February 1983 cover story about an official Israeli report on the 1982 massacre of some 700 Arabs in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside Beirut. The killings, which followed the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, were done by Christian Phalangist militiamen.
From Battling over a Paragraph
By James Kelly
Nov. 26, 1984
Ariel Sharon vs. Time Inc. was an unprecedented case of a major foreign official suing for libel in a U.S. court over a story about his official actions. Moreover, it was a trial in which that official's government, citing security reasons, controlled information considered critical to the outcome.
From A General Loses His Case
By James Kelly
Feb. 4, 1985
From my childhood, I have believed Jews and Arabs can live together, and I believe now they should live together. I was taught by my parents from a very early age one very important thing. If that would be understood, all of us could live in peace. It is that all the rights to this country, to the land of Israel -- especially Judea and Samaria -- are Jewish.
From Never! Never! Never!
By Murray J. Gart
Apr. 17, 1989
Ariel Sharon pulls down the brim of his black Australian bush hat--a Jewish Crocodile Dundee. On his thick fingers, he is counting off the names his political enemies hurl at him: 'Hard-liner. Extremist. Rightist. War criminal.' His 1,500 acres on the edge of the Negev Desert is one of the few private farms in Israel and a refuge from the controversy that has followed him through 55 years in the military and in politics.
From Hard Times, Hard Man
By Matt Rees
Nov. 27, 2000
In the past six months, Sharon's advisers have built an image of their candidate as a man of peace. Hard peace, perhaps, but a peace that makes sense to Israeli voters who are disappointed with Prime Minister Ehud Barak. It's an image deeply at odds with Sharon's reputation as an ironfisted, extremist adventurer, the man most associated with Israel's disastrous war in Lebanon and with the defiant Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
From Remaking Sharon
By Matt Rees
Feb. 5, 2001
As Sharon surveys the burning Palestinian territories and Israel's simmering border with Lebanon, every conflict looks existential. Sharon had a hand in each of Israel's wars, from the wound he received in the Battle of Latrun in 1948 through his controversial role as Defense Minister during the Lebanon War of 1982. In this decisive chapter of his life, the 73-year-old former general has to prepare for a kind of war and a kind of peace at the same time.
From The Pressure On Sharon
By Matt Rees
Sep. 10, 2001
Even if Sharon thought Abbas the most wonderful Arab leader the Middle East has ever seen, it would matter little. Since Israel's creation, Sharon has believed that if it is attacked, it must attack back. There's not the slightest reason to think he is going to change his mind now.
From Sharon's Game
By Michael Elliott, Massimo Calabresi and John F. Dickerson
Jun. 23, 2003
The prospect of being forced from office seems only to have added to Sharon's desire to carry out his bold policy of 'disengagement,' which calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and perhaps much of the West Bank and the completion of a wall to seal off Israel from Palestinian-dominated territory. If implemented, the plan would result in the first evacuations of settlements by Israel since the signing of a peace deal with the Palestinians a decade ago.
From Prepare To Evacuate
By Matt Rees
Apr. 12, 2004
Once again Sharon, 77, is on the move, and once again history is watching. The Israeli Prime Minister has stirred the pot by pledging to withdraw troops and settlements from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. ... If it leads to a general rollback from the Palestinian territories, Sharon may one day be remembered alongside Charles de Gaulle, who came to power committed to holding on to Algeria but swiftly moved to rid France of its colonial burden.
From Time 100: Ariel Sharon
By Benny Morris
Apr. 18, 2005
To his critics, the notion that Sharon might ever bring himself to make concessions to the Palestinians was laughable. They raged when, not long after Sharon ordered tanks into the West Bank in 2002, President George W. Bush called him a 'man of peace.' But then the unthinkable happened: Sharon in April of last year announced plans to evacuate all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank, a move that would uproot 10,000 Israelis from their homes and effectively hand the Palestinian Authority control over Gaza. Backed by the Bush Administration and a majority of both Israelis and Palestinians, the disengagement plan stirred hopes for a breakthrough in the moribund peace process--an optimism that gained fresh momentum after the death of Sharon's nemesis, Yasser Arafat, last November.
From The Gamble Of a Lifetime
By Romesh Ratnesar and Matt Rees
May 23, 2005
Ariel Sharon is nicknamed the Bulldozer. The Israeli Prime Minister showed why last week. He reshaped the political landscape by ditching his right-wing Likud Party--which he helped found in 1973--and forming a new centrist bloc called Kadima (Hebrew for forward). Sharon, who will lead the party into elections in March, said he wants to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian road map for peace, not on 'wasting time in political struggles,' a swipe at the Likud hawks who have undermined him.
From Moving Israel Forward?
By Jeff Chu
Dec. 5, 2005
Sharon was elected and re-elected in 2003 for his pugnacity, not his vision. He swam among many political ideologies, and none have found the solution to the Palestinian problem. But in the final years of his tenure as Prime Minister, with what was likely to be his last election looming, he seemed closer than ever to defining an ideology of his own.
From The Lonely Warrior
By Lisa Beyer
Jan. 16, 2006
For many Israelis, he was a builder and a bulwark; for Palestinians, a destroyer and a deterrent. TIME invited an international panel of experts to reflect on the Prime Minister's place in history and the prospects for peace when he is gone
From Ariel Sharon's Contentious Life and Legacy
By Nadia Mustafa and Coco Masters
Jan. 16, 2006
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