In February 2001, with the fighting continuing and last-ditch peace talks collapsing, Israelis grew deeply disillusioned and inclined to lay all the blame on Arafat. Yearning for a strong leader, they elected Sharon prime minister in a landslide.
Fighting continued throughout Sharon’s first term in office and he was re-elected in 2003 to a second term.
Later that year, with Israeli towns suffering a wave of suicide bombings originating in the nearby West Bank, the bulldozers once again went into action as Sharon began building a barrier of walls and fences.
In late 2003, he unveiled his “unilateral disengagement” plan — withdrawing from territory he no longer deemed essential to Israel’s security — without an agreement with the Palestinians.
He also confined Arafat to his West Bank headquarters in his final years before allowing the longtime Palestinian leader to fly to France in late 2004 shortly before his death. Arafat’s death gave him a new, more moderate Palestinian leadership with which to deal.
In an earlier speech he dropped what for Israelis was a bombshell. For the first time he called Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza an “occupation” and conceded that an independent Palestinian state was inevitable.
“Occupation is bad,” he said in front of cameras to his shocked Likud lawmakers.
Still, the Gaza pullback fell far short of anything offered by his predecessor or acceptable to even moderate Palestinians. Though Sharon had pledged during the current parliamentary campaign to restart peace talks, he also vowed until the very end to keep Jerusalem as Israel’s capital “for eternity.”
Speaking Saturday, Olmert said Sharon’s legacy was far more complicated than critics say.
“Arik was not a warmonger. When it was necessary to fight, he stood at the forefront of the divisions in the most sensitive and painful places, but he was a smart and realistic person and understood well that there is a limit in our ability to conduct wars,” he said.