October 03, 2000|By Mary Curtius | Mary Curtius,LOS ANGELES TIMES
JERUSALEM - In Israel, they call him the Bulldozer. The name captures both the hulking physicality of soldier-politician Ariel Sharon and his philosophical outlook on the world.
Through Israel's war-torn existence, Sharon has strode purposely into some of the nation's bloodiest and most contentious contacts with Arabs, emerging sometimes as a hero, sometimes in disgrace. He was the darling of Prime Ministers David Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin but undermined Begin's authority in 1982 during Israel's ill-fated invasion of Lebanon. He served as an adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He has been a dangerous political foe to Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
And for most of his adult life, Sharon has been the implacable enemy of the Palestinians.
"This man is connected with catastrophes for the Palestinians," says Yasser Abed Rabbo, minister of culture in the Palestinian Authority. "This man was responsible for the most brutal massacre in Palestinian history. This man also was responsible for the vast plan of confiscation of land in the West Bank."
Sharon is a bulky, white-haired figure of 72 who finds himself once again the center of controversy. Palestinians blame him for triggering the violence that has convulsed the region since Thursday. That was the day that Sharon, head of the Likud Party, led a delegation of right-wing Knesset members under heavy police guard into the sacred compound holy to Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem's Old City known as the Temple Mount.
Sharon says he went to assert Israel's sovereignty over the site at a time when Barak is exploring possibilities of sharing control of it with the Palestinian Authority in an effort to achieve a final Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.
His critics accuse Sharon of callously exploiting the most sensitive site in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to derail the peace process or to advance his career as leader of the Likud.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said yesterday that Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount was "definitely counter-productive." But before her remarks, Sharon made public a letter to Albright in which he rejects responsibility for the violence. "I deeply regret, and I find it totally unacceptable," his letter says, "that your spokesman was quick to make a false statement that my visit to the Temple Mount `may have caused tension,' insinuating that it ignited the riots and disturbances in Jerusalem that spread to Judea, Samaria [the West Bank] and Gaza, and later to Israel itself."
Domestic politics may have played a role in his visit. It came the day after former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was cleared by Israel's attorney general of wrongdoing in a corruption investigation that had kept Netanyahu out of politics for the past year.
Netanyahu is expected to challenge Sharon for leadership of Likud so that he can run against Barak in elections that may be held early next year. Polls of the Likud Central Committee, which must elect the next leader, show Netanyahu easily beating Sharon. Sharon, his critics say, went to the Temple Mount to solidify support from the right as he girds to battle Netanyahu.
"The appropriate response to this visit would have been to ignore it," says an adviser to Barak, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
But Palestinians saw Sharon's visit as sheer provocation and were determined not to let it pass.
The compound he visited is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the site where the two Jewish temples of antiquity stood. Muslims call it Haram al Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, the third holiest site in Islam, where the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque stand today. Sharon's visit symbolized to many Palestinians what they perceive as an Israeli threat to wrest control of the compound, which is run by the Waqf, or Islamic Trust, through the final peace negotiations inching toward some sort of resolution.
Riots broke out in the compound as Sharon's visit ended. They spread quickly from Jerusalem's Old City into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, then into Arab towns and villages across Israel. Palestinians are calling the deadly violence the "Al Aqsa intifada."
"The provocation of the murderer, the criminal, the liar - Sharon - is what provoked the situation," Col. Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Authority's internal security forces in the West Bank, said Sunday.
Sharon insisted in an interview with Y-net, the Internet site of the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot, that he bore no responsibility for the bloodshed.
"My visit did not ignite the riots," Sharon said. "This is a comprehensive and planned campaign by [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat in order to apply pressure on Israel and the United States and has no relation to my visit on the Temple Mount."
Sharon said he was "sorry for the casualties on both sides." "However, it is inconceivable that each time Palestinian demands are not accepted, they will start with violence."
