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Ariel Sharon attends the proclamation ceremony of the Shlomzion party in this 1977 photo. From the left, Ariel Sharon, his son Gilad, wife Lily, and son Omri. (AP)
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| By Associated Press January 11, 2006 |
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In moments of reflection, Ariel Sharon liked to describe boyhood images that always drifted back to the land: tilling the sun-hardened soil with his father, the sticky-sweet aroma of lemon groves, daybreak hikes into the desert that slope down to the Dead Sea.
As Sharon's prominence grew over the decades, so did the significance of these tales on Israel's collective conscience.
They form part of the core layers in the making of a modern mythology - laid down bit by bit as Sharon moved from the fields of Kfar Malal to battlefields to politics to a kind of larger-than-life aura in a nation hungry for heroic nostalgia and the uncomplicated idealism before statehood in 1948.
Nothing figures more prominently in these desires than land. The tales of early Jewish immigrants from Europe turning scrubland into farms and orchards carry a power for Israelis that's as fundamental as Joan of Arc for the French or the Wild West for Americans.
It's also an icon with fading connections to the present. Many of the once-thriving communal farms have disbanded or turned into housing tracts. The fields Sharon worked as a boy have been swallowed by greater Tel Aviv. Last year Sharon toppled the doctrine of land at all costs - which he once championed - by removing settlers from the Gaza Strip.
"Sharon reminds people of the old secular ideals of the first Jewish settlers," said Nachman Ben-Yehuda, a professor of sociology at Hebrew University. "They didn't come from Europe to become merchants or money changers. They came to work the land. This holds mythical dimensions in the mind of the nation."
But it also has been forced to make room for new realities. Sharon in recent years adopted an outlook based on demographics rather than geography: deciding that it's more essential to maintain the Jewish majority in the Israeli heartland rather than fight a losing birthrate battle with Palestinians in Gaza and perhaps elsewhere.
"Sharon has created his own mythology," said Ben-Yehuda. "In Israel, it's always about land."
Kfar Malal, where Sharon lived until a teenager, was one of Israel's first moshavim, or agricultural communities in which individual farmers shared some resources - a looser arrangement than the communal-style philosophy of the now fading kibbutz movement.
In the early 1970s, Sharon took control of Havat Hashikmim, or Sycamore Ranch, nearly 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of rolling hills about 60 kilometers (35 miles) southwest of Jerusalem. Even as prime minister, Sharon returned from Jerusalem nearly every night by motorcade or helicopter.
He was at the ranch when he suffered his severe stroke Jan. 4.
Last year, Sharon attended ceremonies to mark the 90th anniversary of Kfar Malal, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) northeast of Tel Aviv. He evoked memories from an era long past.
"My strength comes from the family and also from putting work into the citrus grove and plowing the vineyard and from nights of guard duty," he said.
Years ago, urban sprawl reached the village. Sharon's boyhood home - a one-story cottage with a cluster of date palms - is hard against a busy boulevard lined by shops and falafel stalls. Some narrow streets lead to what's left of Sharon's boyhood vistas: a few fields and small lemon groves. Apartment blocks sit in the distance.
A group of Filipino workers finished installing an irrigation system on a field of yams. The owner recalls the young "Arik" _ which has remained Sharon's nickname _ being under a tight leash from his Russian-born father who had changed his last name from Scheinerman.
"His father was a very tough man," said Moshe, who refused to give his last name.
One frequently repeated story is young Sharon cutting his chin in a fall. His mother, the story goes, did not take him to the village clinic but ran two three kilometers (two miles) to another community because the family's relationships with the locals was so strained.
Moshe, who is seven years younger than the 77-year-old Sharon, recalls a sharp change in Sharon after he left - first to join the Haganah, the underground militia formed during the time of the British Mandate, and later as he rose in the ranks of the Israeli forces, including command in the 1950s of "Unit 101" that was accused of widespread reprisals against Arabs.
"He would bring back weapons from Unit 101 and we'd fire them in the lemon trees," said Moshe. "He had become very confident."
Sharon's public reminiscences, however, mostly concentrated on the simple pleasures of rural life. In a 2001 interview with Israel's Haaretz magazine he described working with his father in a watermelon patch. He also recounted hikes into the desert and the satisfaction of working the land as a teen.
"I don't know whether it's possible to recapture the feeling of excitement I had then after a day of plowing in the field," he told the magazine.
But accusations of abuses were never far away, including questions about the expansion of Sycamore Ranch.
Sharon took great pride in showing off the ranch's sheep, cotton fields and homes, including extending an invitation last year to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. The ranch is close enough to be hit - and has been - by rockets fired by militants in Gaza, about 10 kilometers (six miles) away.
The simple grave of his late wife, Lily, sits on a hill near the ranch surrounded by cactus and red bougainvillea. It is widely believed Sharon wants this as his final resting place.
A few miles away, a tent city of evicted Gaza settlers sits next to a service station. A banner counts the days since they were forced out. A sign reads: "Sharon, you have your land. Where's ours?"
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