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Ariel Sharon (Hebrew: אֲרִיאֵל שָׁרוֹן [aʁiˈ(ʔ)el ʃaˈʁon] ⓘ; also known by his diminutive Arik, אָרִיק; 26 February 1928 – 11 January 2014) was an Israeli general and politician who served as the 11th prime minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006.
Ariel Sharon dead: How Israel's 'sleeping giant' was kept in a coma for eight years. From being struck down by the stroke in January 2006 to his eventual death, the iconic leader refused to go...
- Overview
- Early life and military career
Ariel Sharon (born February 26, 1928, Kefar Malal, Palestine [now in Israel]—died January 11, 2014, Ramat Gan, Israel) Israeli general and politician, whose public life was marked by brilliant but controversial military achievements and political policies. He was one of the chief participants in the Arab-Israeli wars and was elected prime minister ...
Born Ariel Scheinerman—like many Israelis, he Hebraized his name in the early years of the state—Sharon grew up in a family of Russian immigrants in then British-ruled Palestine. His early years were marked by experiences in the secular, socialist Labour Zionist movement and in the Haganah, the underground Zionist militia, which he joined at age 14. In December 1947 he became a full-time soldier. In 1948, Sharon fought as a junior officer in the battle of Laṭrūn; when Israeli forces there were routed by Jordanian troops, Sharon’s platoon was destroyed, and he was seriously injured. He later said that he was “eaten up by despair and the shame of the defeat.” After the war he remained in uniform and served as an intelligence officer while studying Middle Eastern history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In July 1953 Sharon was appointed the head of Unit 101, a commando group charged with conducting reprisal raids against Jordanian border villages in response to incursions by Arab irregulars. Sharon was accorded considerable independence of action, to which he added a natural impetuosity and recklessness. In October one such operation, a retaliatory attack against the village of Qibyā (in the West Bank), left 69 civilians dead, many of them women and children. The episode evoked criticism both in Israel and abroad. Israeli foreign minister Moshe Sharett, who had opposed any such retaliation, decried the raid as having exposed Israel before the world “as a gang of bloodsuckers, capable of mass murder.” But Sharon was protected by the country’s combative first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who described the young Sharon as original and visionary. In his diary Ben-Gurion also noted, “Were he to rid himself of his faults of not speaking the truth and to distance himself from gossip, he would be an exceptional military leader.”
In 1955 Sharon led another raid, this time directed at the Egyptian forces that were occupying the Gaza Strip. The incident, in which 38 Egyptians and 8 Israelis were killed, heightened tensions between Israel and Egypt. In late October 1956 the crisis culminated in the invasion of Egypt by Israel, in secret alliance with Britain and France (see Suez Crisis). In the ensuing campaign, Sharon commanded paratroopers who captured the strategic Mitla Pass in the central Sinai Peninsula. He exceeded orders and sustained heavy losses, again garnering a mixture of praise for his military ability and criticism of his headstrong leadership.
In 1957 he was sent to Staff College in Camberley, England, for officer training. Later he studied part-time at what was then the Tel Aviv branch of the Hebrew University and graduated with a law degree in 1966.
In late May 1967 Egypt remilitarized the Sinai and declared a blockade against Israeli ships passing through the Strait of Tiran. When the Israeli government appeared to hesitate about its response to Egypt’s actions, Sharon proposed to the chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, that the military high command take power and hold the cabinet in detention while the armed forces launched a preemptive attack on Egypt. A few days later, however, the government itself decided to go to war.
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- Bernard Wasserstein
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Jan 11, 2014 · Ariel Sharon was known as The Bulldozer: a larger-than-life, blustering figure who came to dominate the domestic political scene as much by his sheer physical presence as by his...
- 7 min
Jan 11, 2014 · Israel's eleventh prime minister passed away in 2014 after eight years in a coma. He was a controversial and influential leader, known for his military and political careers, and his role in the Lebanon War and the Gaza disengagement.
Following the death of former Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, Senior Lecturer in International Security at the University Birmingham, Dr Asaf Siniver, looks back at the career of a man who was forever a polarising presence.
Jan 11, 2014 · Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has died aged 85 after spending eight years in a coma following a stroke. He was a giant of Israel's military and political scene, but courted ...
