MERIP Primer on the Uprising in Palestine

Who Is Ariel Sharon?

A retired army general, Ariel Sharon, 74, has been a controversial figure in Israeli politics for decades. In 1971, he ordered a systematic campaign to "pacify" the population of Gaza through massive repression, expulsions, and arrests. First elected to the Knesset in 1977, Sharon was defense minister during the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. An Israeli tribunal found Sharon indirectly responsible for the September 1982 massacre (by Lebanese militias under Israeli control) of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians living in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. As a result, Sharon was removed as defense minister but retained a role in the Cabinet as "minister without portfolio." Survivors of the massacre filed briefs with a Belgian judge calling for indictment of Sharon and Lebanese militia commanders for war crimes. This effort is presently stalled.

Since 1987, Sharon has maintained a heavily guarded residence, draped in an Israeli flag, in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. In the early 1990s, while serving as housing minister in Yitzhak Shamir's Likud government, he promoted a massive construction drive to increase Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Sharon was a vociferous critic of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's decision to negotiate with the Palestinians. His provocative visit to al-Haram al-Sharif on September 28, 2000, and the harsh Israeli response to the protests that followed, helped ignite the Palestinian uprising. When Barak resigned and called for new prime ministerial elections, Sharon won with 60 percent of the vote.

Since taking office in February 2001, Sharon has increased repression against Palestinians, several times sending Israeli troops and tanks into Palestinian-controlled cities, villages and refugee camps, including the full-scale invasions of West Bank population centers in March-April 2002. Since the September 11 hijackings in the US, Sharon has ratcheted up rhetoric pinning the blame for Israeli-Palestinian violence on the person of Yasser Arafat and equating Israeli offensives in the Occupied Territories with George W. Bush's "war on terrorism." Currently, the Bush administration and Sharon's Labor coalition partners restrain him from expelling Arafat from Palestinian lands altogether and completely dismantling the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Despite his rhetorical support for "peace" and even a Palestinian state, Sharon has clearly articulated his refusal to compromise over Jerusalem or to withdraw Israeli forces from more than the 42 percent of the West Bank and 60 percent of Gaza now under nominal PA administration -- should negotiations begin again. He has also refused to discuss return or reparations for Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948.

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