Ruthless soldier who would promise to find 'true peace'

[Englander]

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Published: 05 January 2006

Ariel Sharon is known as "the bulldozer". As Israeli defence minister, he was the architect of the massacre of more than 1,000 people in the 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Lebanon. He also triggered the second Palestinian Intifada by paying a single visit to the Arab "holy of holies", the Temple Mount, in 2000.

He is the father of the Israeli settlement movement and, as prime minister, presided over the building of the "security fence", the wall seen by the Palestinians as enshrining the separation of Palestinians and Israelis by encroaching on Arab land in defiance of international law.

He is the leader who confined Yasser Arafat to his bunker in Ramallah after swearing he would never deal with his old foe whom he had once forced into exile from Beirut.

And yet the 77-year-old Mr Sharon is also a pragmatist, who broke with the ideologues of the Likud bloc to form his own centrist party that is expected to win the elections in March thanks to the support of moderate politicians in the Labour party and from Likud's traditional base.

After the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and from four settlements in the West Bank, which was completed in September, he is considered a traitor by many in his own constituency.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article336626.ece