The Lonely Warrior

(3 of 4)

Israel's most divisive war is often laid at Sharon's feet: the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which he planned as Minister of Defense. One objective, running the P.L.O. out of Lebanon, was largely achieved, but the scheme to install in power the leader of the Lebanese Phalangist militia, a Christian group friendly to Israel, was a debacle. After Phalangist forces massacred as many as 800 men, women and children at the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila, an Israeli inquiry concluded that Sharon bore "indirect" responsibility, forcing him to resign as Defense Minister. Sharon sued TIME for $50 million for a 1983 cover story that said a secret appendix to the Israeli report stated, in effect, that he had encouraged the massacre. In 1985 a federal jury in New York City concluded that TIME had not libeled Sharon, though it also found that the magazine had acted negligently; after being allowed to examine the appendix during the trial, TIME acknowledged that it had erred in describing what the appendix said and apologized.

Sharon's lifelong militarism is often mistaken for lifelong rightism. In fact, he spent his military career in the bosom of Mapai, the precursor to the Labor Party, as a favorite of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister. Sharon remained close to those in Labor, especially his friend Shimon Peres. Sharon served as a special adviser to Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the mid-1970s.

Those good relations are partly the product of good manners. Belying his oafish appearance, Sharon was a charmer. At the house he shared with his wife Lily until her death in March 2000, on their 1,000-acre ranch on the edge of the Negev Desert, he was an enthusiastic and attentive host. "Please, more lemonade, more cookies," he would insist to visitors.

After years of political probation following the Lebanon war, it was, ironically, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who gave Sharon his final big break. At peace talks in the summer of 2000, Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the bulk of the West Bank, including some part of East Jerusalem. Arafat refused the deal. Presumably to protest Barak's offer to divide Jerusalem, Sharon, accompanied by dozens of Israeli police, took the unusual step of visiting what Jews call the Temple Mount, the plateau that today hosts al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. The visit provoked rioting and an Israeli response that sparked the second intifadeh, which together with Israel's countermeasures has claimed some 3,000 Palestinian and 1,000 Israeli lives. While some Israelis and Palestinians blamed Sharon for provoking the violence, it soon became clear that Arafat, who fanned the unrest, had been spoiling for a fight and would have taken any excuse.