Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharón (in Hebrew, אֲרִיאֵל שָׁרוֹן, popularly known by his nickname 'Árik'; Kfar Malal, British Mandate for Palestine, February 26, 1928 - Ramat Gan, Israel, January 11, 2014) was an Israeli military and politician. As a statesman he was 11th. Prime Minister of the State of Israel.
Sharon was a major in the Israel Defense Forces from its inception in 1948, as a paratroop officer. He had a prominent participation in the Israeli War of Independence, becoming a platoon commander of the Alexandroni Brigade. He was instrumental in the creation of Unit 101 for Reprisal Operations in response to constant fedayeen attacks. He also had a prominent role in the Sinai War, the Six Day War, the War of Attrition, and the Yom Kippur War.
Ariel Sharon was considered the greatest field commander in Israel's history and one of its greatest military strategists. After the Battle of Abu-Ageila on the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War and the encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army in the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli public opinion dubbed him as "The King of Israel".
After his retirement from the army, he began his political career, holding various ministerial posts in the Likud party governments from 1977 to 1992 and from 1996 to 1999. He became Likud leader in 2000 and was Prime Minister of Israel from 2001 to 2006.
In 1983, the Kahan Commission found him indirectly responsible for the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which hundreds of Palestinian refugees were murdered by Lebanese Christian Phalangists, and he was forced to resign as Defense Minister.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, Sharon pushed for the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. However, as prime minister, from 2004 to 2005 he devised and carried out the Unilateral Israeli Withdrawal Plan from the Gaza Strip. Because of the withdrawal from Gaza he faced strong internal opposition within Likud, so in November 2005 he withdrew from Likud and formed a new party, Kadima. He was expected to win the next election and was interpreted by many as driving Israel out of most of the West Bank in a series of unilateral withdrawals. After suffering a stroke in January 2006, Sharon remained in a vegetative state until his death in January 2014.
Birth
Ariel Sharón was born on February 26, 1928 in Kfar Malal, an agricultural moshav, in the then British Mandate, (with the surname Scheinermann, later hebraized by Sharón) son of Shmuel Scheinermann (1896-1956) from Brest-Litovsk and Vera (née Schneirov) (1900-1988) from Mogilev. His parents met while studying at the university in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, where Sharon's father was studying agronomy and his mother was studying medicine. His father and his mother were of German-Polish and Belarusian descent, respectively, immigrating to Eretz Israel in 1922 in the wake of increasing persecution of Jews in the region by the Russian communist government.
The family arrived on the Third Aliyah and settled in Kfar Malal, a socialist and secular community. (Ariel Sharon himself would remain proudly secular throughout his life.) Although his parents were supporters of Mapai, they did not always accept the communal consensus: "The eventual ostracism of the Scheinermans...followed Haim's murder Arlozoroff in 1933 when Dvora and Shmuel refused to endorse the anti-revisionist slander of the labor movement and participate in Bolshevik-style public vilification rallies, then the order of the day. Retribution was not long in coming. They were expelled from the local clinic, the health fund and the village synagogue. The cooperative truck was not making deliveries to his farm or picking up produce,"
Start of military career
At the age of 14, he enlisted in the Haganah. At the age of 20, in 1948, he commanded an infantry company in the Alexandroni Brigade during the Israeli War of Independence, being seriously wounded in the second battle of Latrun (1948). He continued in a military career, being named a company commander in 1949 and an intelligence officer in 1951, the year in which he retired to study "History and Culture of the Near East."
In 1953 the commando unit "101" and Sharon was asked to return to the army to command her. This unit carried out retaliatory actions in response to attacks carried out by Palestinian terrorists against civilians in Israel, but after a massacre in the Palestinian village of Kibya, which caused the death of an unknown number of Palestinian civilians, unit 101 He joined the 202 parachute brigade. Sharon was given command of that brigade.
The Suez War
In response to the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Suez War broke out, in which Sharon commanded the 202 paratrooper brigade. The brigade was deployed, both by airdrop and land transport, near the Mitla Pass. Sharon's orders expressly prohibited taking said pass, although after repeated consultations he managed to be allowed to send a reconnaissance force to check whether there were enemy troops at said pass or not; this reconnaissance force came under fire and Sharon ordered the rest of his brigade to seize the pass, leading to one of the bloodiest clashes of the entire war.
Consequences of the battle of Mitla
Some subordinates accused Sharon of sending the reconnaissance force with the purpose of provoking the Egyptian attack and thus having an excuse to occupy the pass. Regardless of the validity of these accusations, it appears that the Egyptians were planning to withdraw and therefore Sharon could have taken the step at no cost to his troops. This incident damaged Sharon's reputation within the army, delaying his promotion for several years. However, when Isaac Rabin was appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli army, Sharon rose again, especially in the training section of the army, until he reached the rank of major general.
The Six Day War
During the Six-Day War in 1967, Sharon commanded one of the three divisions (the 38th) on the Sinai front. After taking the Jiradi Gorge and the town of Khan Yunis on the second day of the war, he led his forces against Umm Qatef, one of the main Egyptian strongholds in the Sinai Peninsula, whose defenses he had studied during his time in the training section. from army. One of the most important tank battles of the entire war was fought at Umm Qatef, during which the Egyptians lost 400 men captured and killed, compared to 41 Israeli prisoners and 14 killed.
His attempts to pursue retreating Egyptian units during the third day of the war were thwarted when his troops crossed paths with another of the three Israeli divisions on the Sinai front, that of General Yoffe.
On the fourth day of the war, the last major fighting in the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian units were trying to flee to the west bank of the Suez Canal, as the Israeli high command had ordered its Troops did not take the channel for fear of repeating the joint Anglo-French intervention that ended the Suez War. Ariel Sharon's division ambushed these Egyptian troops several times, capturing high-ranking officers.
Interlude between the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War
After the Six-Day War, Sharon was appointed commander of the Southern Front (or Egyptian Front, or Sinai Front) in 1967. Some sources, such as the BBC, suggest that his next natural promotion, that of head of state Major, she was denied due to Sharon's extremist positions and his behavior during the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.[citation needed] With no possible promotion, Sharon he retired from the army and was elected to the Knesset as a Likud deputy.
The Yom Kippur War
Sharon was again called up at the start of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. During this war, he was given command of a reserve tank division; his forces did not engage the Egyptians directly, but located a gap in their line, after which Sharon was ordered to take advantage of that gap to break through the Egyptian lines, which he did on October 16, 1973. Bypassing the limits of Following orders, Sharon used his unit to cut off supplies to the Egyptian Third Army, eventually crossing the Channel and reaching 101 kilometers from the Egyptian capital, Cairo, forcing the Third Army to surrender.
Political career
Sharon was court-martialed for disobeying his orders, but the court found that Sharon's actions had been militarily effective, and therefore no penalty was imposed. Some Israelis consider Sharon a war hero for his actions during this war, as his intervention was probably decisive for victory on the southern front. However, his extreme political positions and his constant insubordination caused him to be relieved of command in 1974. In that same year he also resigned from his Likud seat.
After his forced retirement, he founded his own party, Shlomtzion, which he tried to merge with both the (left-wing) Labor Party and the (centrist) Shinui, while serving as security adviser in the first government of Isaac Rabin. After the failure of these two unions, he presented himself in coalition with the Likud of Menájem Begin, forming the first conservative government in the history of Israel, during which he became Minister of Agriculture and president of the Ministerial Commission on settlements, a position from which he would become famous for his defense of the rights of Israeli settlers. In 1981 he changed that position to that of Defense Minister, which he held when the Lebanon War broke out in 1982.
The Lebanon War
During the Lebanese war, when Sharon was Minister of Defense, the massacres of Sabra and Shatila took place, where an undetermined number between 460 and 3,500 Palestinians were tortured, raped and murdered by Elie Hobeika's Lebanese Phalanges. The Israeli Parliament (Knesset) set up a commission to investigate this massacre, the Kahan Commission, which in its conclusions pointed to the Christian Phalangists as the material authors of the deaths, but accused Israel of indirect responsibility (such as that of the Russian authorities in the pogroms, says the report), for which reason he recommended Sharon's dismissal as minister, considering that he "failed in his obligations."
Political career after Sabra and Shatila
Once he retired from his position as Defense Minister, and already under the orders of the new Prime Minister, Isaac Shamir, Sharón was Minister without Portfolio (1983-1984), Minister of Commerce and Industry (1984-1990) and Minister of Housing (1990-1992), until the new change of governments and the assumption of the labor party Isaac Rabin.
Sharon returned to the Cabinet of Ministers when the Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, regained power in 1996, first as head of Infrastructure (1996-1998) and later of Foreign Affairs (1998-1999).
Al-Aqsa Intifada
After the fall of Netanyahu, Sharon became the leader of the struggling Likud, the party with which he won the elections in 2001.
Following a visit by Sharon to the Temple Mount, the Al-Aqsa Intifada began, which was initially attributed to that visit (the visit was authorized by Jibril Rajub, head of Security Palestinian in the West Bank). However, an international commission, the Mitchell Commission, tasked with studying the origins of the Intifada and examining the riots and repression during Sharon's visit, came to the conclusion that the visit was not the reason the Intifada began. of al-Aqsa.
Prime Minister of Israel (2001-2006)
After the fall of Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharón was elected prime minister in 2001, revalidating his mandate in the 2003 elections. On both occasions, he lacked the necessary votes to form a government alone, but -as customary in Israeli democracy - was able to form a right-wing, secular and neoliberal coalition government, which later gave way to a national coalition government with Labour.
The most prominent political decision of his government was the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, carried out in August 2005, which had a minority opposition although active and noisy within Israel, and which implied the unilateral eviction of Israeli settlers residing in the area. On the other hand, the planning and construction of the Israeli defense barrier or separation fence continued, a barrier made mostly of barbed wire and 10 percent of it made up of a wall, depending on the different sections of its route, which separates Israel from the most of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank. According to Sharon's government, the fence was one of the main reasons for the drastic decrease in the number of victims of suicide attacks, as it made it difficult for terrorists to infiltrate Israeli territory; while the Court of The Hague opined, in a non-binding opinion, that the construction of the barrier on the chosen route is contrary to international law and recommended dismantling the sections to the east of the "Green Line" as it is considered an improper appropriation of Palestinian territory. Sharon's government continued its predecessors' controversial policy of "targeting" (from Hebrew סִכּוּל מְמֻקַּד, sikul memukad) of members of terrorist organizations, including Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
In late November 2005, Sharon was forced to dissolve the Knesset when the new Labor leader, Amir Péretz, withdrew his support for the coalition that had kept him in power. The dissolution of this coalition and the radicalization of Likud, especially due to pressure from the leader of the most right wing of the formation, Benjamin Netanyahu, caused Sharon to decide to leave his party, to create a new center formation, called Kadima, which has been joined by some ministers, deputies from all factions and candidates from all social classes.
Illness and death
On December 18, 2005, he suffered a relapse due to a mild stroke. Two days later she recovered and, although with a series of medical restrictions, he returned to his daily work. On January 4, 2006, a few days after the first relapse, Sharon suffered a severe brain hemorrhage while resting at his residence in the Negev desert. He was treated for several weeks at the Ha-Dasah Hospital in the city of Jerusalem.
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Months later, he was transferred from Ha-Dasah Hospital to another medical center located in the city of Tel-Aviv. After months without news about his health, on July 23, 2006, it was reported from the Tel-Hashomer Hospital in Tel-Aviv that his state of health had worsened as a result of kidney failure. On August 14, 2006, it was again reported from the Tel-Hashomer hospital that Sharon's state of health had deteriorated due to double pneumonia and that his life was in grave danger.
On November 3, 2006, it was again reported that Sharon had relapsed. This time she was due to an infection that attacked the heart. On September 23, 2010, he returned home, to the Shikmim Farm in the Negev desert, in a vegetative state at the request of his children. On Saturday, January 11, 2014, he died of heart failure at the age of 85, having spent eight years in a deep coma and in a virtual vegetative state. He had a state funeral attended by numerous foreign political personalities such as the Vice President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997-2007), the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Wim Kok (1994-2002), Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Czech Prime Minister Jiří Rusnok and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier among others. He was buried next to his second wife Lily his on his farm.
Family relations of Sharon
Ariel Sharon was married twice, the first time to Margalit, with whom he had a son, Gur Sharon. Margalit died in a traffic accident in 1962, and his son Gur died accidentally in 1967, when he was playing with his father's rifle. Sharon later married Lily, Margalit's younger sister, with whom he had two children, Omri and Gilad. Lily Sharon died in the year 2000. Both his deceased first wife and son are buried at Shikmin Farm. The area around the graves of Ariel and Lily Sharon is open to the public.
| Predecessor: Menachem Begin |  Minister of Defence of Israel 1981-1983 | Successor: Menachem Begin |
| Predecessor: Gideon Patt | Minister of Industry, Trade and Labour of Israel 1984-1990 | Successor: Moshe Nissim |
| Predecessor: David Levy | Minister of Housing and Construction of Israel 1990-1992 | Successor: Binyamin Ben-Eliezer |
| Predecessor: David Levy | Minister of Energy and Infrastructure of Israel 1996-1999 | Successor: Yitzhak Levy |
| Predecessor: David Levy | Minister for Foreign Affairs of Israel 1998-1999 | Successor: David Levy |
| Predecessor: Benjamin Netanyahu |  Likud leader 1999-2005 | Successor: Benjamin Netanyahu |
| Predecessor: Ehud Barak | Prime Minister of Israel 2001-2006 | Successor: Ehud Ólmert |
| Predecessor: Ephraim Sneh | Minister of Transport of Israel 2002 | Successor: Tzachi Hanegbi |
| Predecessor: Ofir Pines-Paz | Minister of the Interior of Israel 2005-2006 | Successor: Roni Bar-on |
| Predecessor: Cargo created |  Leader of Kadima 2005-2006 | Successor: Ehud Ólmert |