Through Life, Peace
Ariel Sharon
1928-?
As I write this, Prime Minister Sharon fights for life. By the time I finish this entry, this paragraph, this very sentence, he might have passed, the victim of what his doctors have called a "massive stroke". In any case, even if the obituary for his life is not in the process of being written, his political obituary certainly is. And everyone, left, right or center, should be very upset about it.
It is ironic that I should say this. I have, after all, been vociferously anti-Sharon for nearly his entire reign as PM that I've been accused of having a mere personal dislike for him. All that changed when he pulled out of Gaza. It was potentially an act of political suicide in a country where Gaza was considered untouchable, where it was thought of by many Jews in Israel and abroad as the last battlefield in the war against anti-Israeli terrorism. But the peace process could not move forward without this vital concession, and Sharon had the courage to do it, infuriating his allies on the right and confounding his critics on the left. In recent months he had responded to criticism from right-wing hardliners like Benjamin Netanyahu (unfortunately the most likely candidate to take his place as prime minister) by forming his own, more moderate political party. It was in this party that the great hope for peace in the Middle East lay - right-wingers wanted nothing but war, and left-wingers wanted peace at any price. Sharon's third party was the great compromise, the meeting of the minds. And it was the only way anything was going to get done.
Never in the history of the Middle East has so much rested on the health of one man. So pray for Ariel Sharon, the great old lion of Zion. Pray for the Winston Churchill of Israel, and pray very, very hard because his chances of survival are not good. And strange as it is for me to say, we have never needed him more.