A Stroke Against Peace

The truth is that for most of my life I didn’t even like Ariel Sharon. In fact, I couldn’t stand him. I remember the night, in February 2001, when Sharon emerged from the political desert and won Israeli’s parliamentary elections, beating “our guy”—Ehud Barak. My whole family sat in silence in front of the TV, each person too depressed to talk. We couldn’t believe that he, who we regarded as a dangerous right-winger, was our new prime minister.

The following year I went into the Israeli army, and struggled over the next three years to carry out the decisions of a government I did not believe in. During those years in the army, I spent almost every Saturday night I was home in Jerusalem on leave standing in front of Sharon’s house. There, along with a group of about twenty other diehards we demonstrated against his actions, dwelled on his alleged corruption, and yearned for a more moderate leader. For us, Sharon represented everything negative in Israeli politics. He was an uncompromising general. He understood only the language of force. He hid his true intentions.

Five years after the fateful night of his election, my prime minister, lying unconscious in Hadassah Hospital, is lingering between life and death. Even if he recovers, it seems as if his days in politics are over. Doctors say that he probably suffered severe brain damage. And the only thing that I can think about is how, once again, we came so close to peace.

It is as if peace always finds a way to sneak out of our reach, just as we are about to catch up with it. The same feeling of frustration that followed Rabin’s murder has returned. Then, in the midst of a euphoric era in which peace seemed around the corner, Rabin, and with him the hope for peace, were assassinated. Again, there is a sense that peace has once again eluded our grasp.

In the last year or so I, along with many others in the liberal camp in Israel, have developed a deep respect for Sharon. His courageous decision to disengage from Gaza and dismantle the settlements that he himself had initiated took us all by surprise. At first we looked for any ulterior motives that might explain this turn of events. Was he doing this, we asked, in order to increase the number of settlements in the West Bank? But slowly we came to realize that the same man who we had loved to hate had changed. He was tired of blood. It seemed as if, in his old age, this fighter had finally decided to put down his sword. Sharon, we began to believe, wanted to leave his beloved country a sacred legacy—peace.

Less than two months ago, Sharon decided to leave the conservative Likud party, which he himself had founded some 30 years earlier. He proceeded to establish a new party named Kadima, which in Hebrew means “forward.” And indeed, we Israelis felt that this was the direction in which he was leading us. Even Shimon Peres, our elder statesmen and the father of the peace camp, left his Labor party to join Kadima. As the head of his new party, Sharon asked the public for a final four years to make peace. And the public agreed. According to all polls, these two icons of Israeli politics, political rivals turned partners, would have led Israel till 2010. And I, along with many others, felt secure in their hands. We truly believed that the only reason that they both left their political homes of many decades was to attempt a genuine, courageous move. There was a feeling that we were on the verge of better days both for us and for the Palestinians. Indeed, we hoped that Sharon, who enjoyed great popularity, would be able to make peace.

Sharon’s sudden stroke changed everything in Israel. No one knows what will happen next. Many of us have come to trust Sharon, even though we never fully understood what his precise plans were. Many of us felt that, somehow, he was going to pull off something big. But what exactly, and on what terms, remained in his head. Now, perhaps, we will never know. We are left leaderless.

Regardless of politics, we all also feel a personal loss. In a country in which politics is such an ingrained part of daily life, Sharon has almost become part of each family. He has been in our living rooms on television every night for decades, and, especially in the past five years, he has been discussed at Shabbat dinners all over the country every week. Such a symbol of vitality, it is a shock to us all to witness his physical vulnerability.

This is a very sad moment both for Israel and for the Middle East at large. Nevertheless, not all is lost. There are many pragmatic figures in Israeli politics that can step forward in these uncertain times. Of course, at the moment when the entire nation is glued to the TV following every report from the hospital, it seems premature to discuss successors. However, Ehud Olmert, formally the mayor of Jerusalem, who as Sharon’s deputy, has assumed the role of acting prime minister, seems to have the support of many of his peers. He, like Sharon, seems to understand that both sides, the Palestinians and the Israelis, are in desperate need of peace. We can only hope that the next leader, regardless of who he is, will be able to continue to guide us on the path which we began to march down with Sharon—the path to peace.



Mishy Harman ’08 is a history concentrator in Pforzheimer House.