Good riddance to Ariel Sharon. Read the official versus actual biography of Ariel Sharon (doesn’t include new corruption charges against Sharon which surfaced a few days ago).  General Sharon is a war criminal who should have been prosecuted at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Sharon’s accumulated war crimes and state terrorism are far, far greater than the crimes of all Palestinians put together over the last 55 years. This is not a genuine peacemaker, although history’s monsters often portray themselves as peacemakers to justify and sell what they do.
http://electronicintifada.net/forreference/keyfigures/ sharon.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/666439.html
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/people/110.shtml
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If Middle East peacemaking efforts are thrown into “turmoil,” as Steven Gutkin claims, it is only because the Israeli society, the US government and UN allow it to be in a turmoil.  This is a conflict that could have been resolved at any time since 1967—or even since 1948—based on UN resolutions, international law and common sense. If the US government stopped blocking it, the United Nations would have been able to force Israel to honor numerous UN resolutions and international law.  There would likely have been peace.  The US government could have withheld its annual $5 billion donation in aid and loan guarantees to Israel, until Israel was forced to make peace with the Palestinians.  Unfortunately, Sharon believes that Israel controls the USA, as he told Shimon Peres in a cabinet meeting: “don’t worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.”
http://www.wrmea.com/html/newsitem_s.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison05272003.html

Forget Sharon, Netanyahu and even Peretz.  None of them are genuine peacemakers. Real Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers have already reached a comprehensive peace agreement for Israelis and Palestinians who want genuine peace.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0102-02.htm
http://gush-shalom.org/archives/geneva_eng.pdf
http://www.counterpunch.org/baroud06062003.html

Gutkin further writes: “None of Sharon’s possible successors were seen as having his ability to pull together the next ruling coalition.” Israel will have another government, regardless. Israel has allowed the conflict to continue or worsened it since 1948; a few more years or decades won’t make a difference to Israelis. The underlying problem is not just the problem of Sharon or Sharon’s successor.  It’s the underlying political ideology called Zionism which drives all likely Israeli leaders to adopt certain assumptions and principles in how they expect to settle this conflict and create “peace.” Read Illan Pappe’s “A History of Modern Palestine.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/karmi02202004.html

When the mainstream media writes about peace in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, they mean peace on Israel’s one-sided terms at the expense of Palestinian rights and international law.  Such a “peace agreement” means Israel grabs as much as possible of the remaining 22% of Palestinian territory that Israel is militarily occupying illegally (Israel already has taken the other 78% in 1948) and as many Palestinian Christians and Muslims as possible are removed from the land (ethnic cleansing). 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1650426, 00.html?gusrc=rss
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10647.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/said09252003.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/said06142003.html

According to Israeli Ran HaCohen: “ “The Arab states and the Palestinians have in fact acknowledged Israel’s right to exist in peace, if it withdraws from the occupied Palestinian territories taken in 1967; whereas Israel wants to keep these territories, though it doesn’t quite know how.” It is indeed impressive how successful Israeli propaganda and the Western media are in obscuring the simple fact that ongoing conflict is the result of a voluntary Israeli policy, in which Arabs and Palestinians play a subsidiary role.”
http://antiwar.com/hacohen/?articleid=3660

Since the mid-1970s, the Palestinian leaders have been willing to make peace with Israel based on a two-state solution, UN resolution 242 and international law (Yasser Arafat decided on a negotiated peace solution in 1974).  Since 1971 many key Arab states have been willing to make peace (the Saudi peace plan was proposed at the UN security Council in 1976 but the US vetoed it).  The primary obstacle to peace has been the Israeli government (under leaders like Sharon) with the support of the US government. A peace agreement could be made today: the framework for peace – UN Security Council resolution 242 – has existed since 1967, but Israel has consistently refused to make peace with the Palestinians on those terms. Profs. Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz debated at Harvard on these issues recently.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID= 107&ItemID=9458
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11190.htm

When Steven Gutkin claims “…given the Middle East a chance for a return to peacemaking after five years of relentless bloodshed” he does not provide context.  It was Sharon’s provocation, policies and repression that created and sustained that “relentless bloodshed” in the first place. There had been peace between the Palestinians and Israelis for two years preceding this event – on September 28, 2000, then opposition leader Sharon pulled off a big publicity stunt to take attention away from then Israeli PM Ehud Barak.  Sharon visited the Palestinian’s most sacred mosque in Jerusalem (al Aqsa mosque is also the third most sacred mosque in the Islamic world) with a 1,000 Israeli police and declared that the area would forever be Israel’s.  This provoked a Palestinian civilian uprising against Israel’s colonial oppression and humiliation. Since Sharon’s provocative visit over five years ago, 1,074 Israelis (including 123 children) and 3,776 Palestinians (including 705 children) have been killed. In the aftermath of the turmoil, Sharon won the Israeli elections in January 2001 and became prime minister on the promise that he would be tough with the Palestinians. Israeli society got what it wished for.  What followed was the Sharon government’s brutal repression and provocation against the Palestinians. In addition, according to John Pilger, in 2003 “the UN General Assembly voted by 144 to four to condemn the wall that Israel has cut through the heart of the West Bank, annexing the best agricultural land, including the aquifer system that provides most of the Palestinians’ water. Israel, as usual, ignored the world.” Together with the continued building of illegal Israeli colonies on Palestinian land (called settlements) and intensified military occupation, Sharon has “completed the fragmentation of the 22 per cent of historic Palestine that the Palestine Liberation Organisation had agreed to accept in return for recognising the state of Israel.”
http://www.mediamonitors.net/francis8.html
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/
http://www.ifamericansknew.org
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ED8317B4-626C-4 98B-8AD2-F9274D510D99.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4528.htm

Steven Gutkin’s claim “Sharon’s transformation from hawk to pragmatist… has given the Middle East a chance for a return to peacemaking” is not true. Ariel Sharon’s leadership does not offer the best chance of bringing progress to the Middle East peace process. Sharon was not a genuine peace maker (or as Bush says: “a man of courage and peace”).  Sharon may sound more “pragmatic” nowadays, but his actions are still very hawkish and driven by hawkish plans he has been consistently pursuing all these years. A leopard rarely changes its spots.  In 1998, “…on arriving home from the negotiations in Washington, his chief negotiator, the then-foreign minister, Ariel Sharon, told settlers to “run, grab hills” before it was too late, and prevent land near settlements from being turned over to the Palestinians. The settlers took this as a license to build satellites - often miles away from the existing settlements - with the hope of gaining all the land in between. Western diplomats believe that some of the new acquisitions have been strategically chosen to prevent the Palestinians from forming contiguous chunks of land in their effort to compromise a state. ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,3911751-103552, 00.html

Sharon has repeatedly said that he intends to annex 58% of the West Bank, so that the fragmented Palestinian state, to which he might or might not agree, will cover about 10% to 11% of the area of Palestine as it existed before 1948. With the US government’s help, Sharon has been forcing his one-sided “peace plan” onto quisling Palestinian leaders and squeezing more out of the weak Palestinians.  The much larger West Bank including East Jerusalem is 5,800 km2.  This coveted area has over 400,000 illegal Israeli colonists in numerous illegal Israeli colonies (that the media calls “settlements”).  As for the so-called disengagement from Gaza, Sharon has merely removed the only 8,000 illegal Israeli colonists from and given up partial control of the tiny, undesirable Gaza Strip (365 km2 which is about 6% of the West Bank’s area).
http://antiwar.com/hacohen/?articleid=3803
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3949.htm

Do Sharon’s math. The existing Occupied Palestinian Territories is 22% remaining of Palestine as it existed before 1948.  Give back 6% (Gaza Strip) of this 22%.  Take 58% of 94% (West Bank) of the remaining 22%.  The Palestinians get what? About 51% of the remaining 22%.  This means the Palestinians are left with about 11% of the area of Palestine as it existed before 1948 (during the British Mandate).

According to former Israel Knesset member Uri Avnery, Sharon is a Pied Piper building an illusion that he will make peace with the Palestinians. In reality, “...Sharon does not believe that this will happen in his lifetime, because there is no Palestinian partner for peace. So he is prepared, in the meantime, to give back only half of the West Bank. Thus, miraculously, we come back to Sharon’s original formula: to annex unilaterally 58% of the West Bank, not to conduct any peace negotiations with the Palestinians and to keep the whole of Jerusalem.”
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/11 34913807
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery10182004.html
http://www.pchrgaza.org/Intifada/General_Stat.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/saidaxe.html

Sharon does not hide his intentions.  In an interview, Uri Avnery clarified what Sharon was doing. “Question: Has Sharon really undergone a profound change?...(Avnery’s ) Answer:The Ethiopian has not changed his skin. An analysis of the plan, as endorsed by Bush and shown at long last to the Israeli ministers, reveals that it conforms exactly to the plan that Sharon has been propounding for decades. He just cut out a piece of it and is presenting it as an up-to-date plan.  Question:What is his overall plan? ?...(Avnery’s ) Answer: The maximum plan is to turn all of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River into a Jewish State, with no non-Jewish population. Since such an ethnic cleansing is not feasible for the time being, he is implementing his minimum plan: to enlarge the borders of the Jewish State as much as possible, without incorporating a further large Arab population.
Therefore he wants to get rid of the Gaza Strip with its 1.2 million Palestinian inhabitants. He is prepared to evacuate the 7,000 Jewish settlers who are living there, in return for the consolidation of the West Bank settlements, where 250,000 Jewish settlers live. Sharon wants to incorporate in Israel 55% of the West Bank - the area where most of the settlers are located and the Arab population is relatively sparse. The plan spells it out: “It is clear that in the Judea and Samaria region there will remain areas that will be part of the State of Israel, including civilian localities, security areas and other places where Israel has additional interests” (Article 1c)*. This definition could include practically anything. * Since the plan has been leaked only in Hebrew, I have made the translation. Almost all the Palestinian population in the West Bank, some 2.5 million people, will be crowded into the remaining 45% of the area, which, together with the Gaza Strip, will constitute about 10% of the country called Palestine under the British mandate, before 1948. This area will be a kind of archipelago in the big Israeli sea. Each “island” will be cut off from the others and surrounded by Israeli areas. The islands will be artificially connected by new roads, bridges and tunnels, so as to create the illusion of a “viable, contiguous state”, as the Americans demand. According to the written plan: “Israel will improve the transportation infrastructure in the Judea and Samaria region, in order to make possible uninterrupted Palestinian transportation” (4). In practice, these connections can be cut off within minutes at any time. Pretexts can always be found easily.
Sharon does not mind if this collection of enclaves is called a “Palestinian state” according to Bush’s “vision”.
http://gush-shalom.org/archives/article299.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9367.htm

The Guardian’s Gerald Kaufman states: “It is such posturing that leads Sharon to claim that he is now at the centre of Israeli politics. Sharon’s champions argue that Israeli troops’ withdrawal from Gaza demonstrates his peacemaking motivation. Shimon Peres, now a pathetically vain frontman for Sharon, claims that Sharon’s alleged wish for peace is the reason for his jumping ship from the Labour party. Yet, as Brent Scowcroft, the first President Bush’s national security adviser, has explained to Condoleezza Rice: “For Sharon this is not the first move, this is the last move. He’s getting out of Gaza because he can’t sustain 8,000 settlers with half his army protecting them. Then, when he’s out, he will have an Israel that he can control and a Palestinian state atomised enough that it can’t be a problem.” It is good for Labour to be free of the albatross of Peres, following the welcome election of Amir Peretz - a tough, no-nonsense Sephardi whom I first met nearly 20 years ago in the slummy southern development town of Sderot, where he was a populist mayor. Peretz is no peacenik, but he does want a negotiated two-state solution. Instead of lauding Sharon as he expands illegal West Bank settlements and imprisons East Jerusalem in a ring of concrete and armour, the British government should be giving full support to Peretz. He may not be perfect but, if at this bleak hour there is any hope for Israelis and Palestinians alike, he is it.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1660589, 00.html

It is better for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process if politicians like Sharon left the Israeli political scene, and allowed genuine Israeli peace makers to emerge (unfortunately there are too few because Israeli society has benefited from the land grab) and make a fair, just and lasting peace with their Palestinian victims.

Finally, Gutkin notes that “Bush… backed (Sharon’s) tough policy against Palestinian militants, echoing Sharon’s demand that the Palestinians take steps to stop attacks on Israel.” What Gutkin and Bush fail to mention is that, first, before Israel was founded in 1948, the Zionist Jews mounted many terrorist attacks and assassinations against the British, the Palestinians and even the United Nations.  In 1946, for example, Zionist terrorists bombed King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 92 people because it was a site of the British administration). In 1948, they assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, who was the first UN mediator; Folke had helped save 20,000 Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.  Second, when the Palestinians tried to negotiate for peace or use non-violent resistance in the past 37 years, the Israeli government either ignored them or took countermeasures against them.