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Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
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| By Associated Press January 4, 2007 |
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In the tumultuous year since a stroke abruptly terminated Ariel Sharon's domination of Israeli politics, his historic unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has disappointed many.
His successor, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, is desperately trying to make peace with a Palestinian leader he doubts can deliver.
And the Israeli military was dueled to a stalemate by vastly outnumbered and outgunned Lebanese guerrillas in a monthlong war.
Had Sharon not been rendered comatose by the Jan. 4 stroke, the past year would have turned out very differently, some analysts say. Others maintain that the fundamental problems bedeviling the region wouldn't have played out much differently had he remained on the political stage.
If there's one area of agreement, it's that Sharon -- a storied battlefield general -- would have handled the July-August war in Lebanon more prudently.
With Sharon in charge, the war might not have even taken place, said David Kimche, a former Foreign Ministry director and Mossad spy agency deputy chief.
Olmert launched the war just hours after Hezbollah guerrillas based in southern Lebanon killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two in a cross-border raid.
Sharon "would not have jumped into the war in Lebanon after a short debate," Kimche said. "He would have waited, he would have asked many questions. ... And therefore, the war would have been different -- if there had been a war at all."
What's more, said Shlomo Brom, a former military strategy chief, he wouldn't have set the sweeping -- and unattained -- objectives Olmert did, namely, the crushing of Hezbollah and recovery of the captured soldiers.
"I imagine Sharon could not have avoided responding with a tough military strike," Brom said. "But I think he would have managed it better and not let it go on as long as it did and get as complicated as it did. He would have set more realistic objectives and wound it up more quickly."
The Lebanese conflict delivered a body blow to Olmert's plan -- inherited from Sharon -- to follow Israel's landmark evacuation of Gaza with sweeping unilateral pullbacks in the West Bank.
Sharon relinquished Gaza in September 2005 after a long career fighting Arabs and building Jewish settlements. His promise to follow up the Gaza withdrawal by ceding large chunks of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) land held out the hope of further defusing Israel's century-old conflict with the Arabs.
But hopes quickly soured. Rocket fire from Gaza, the capture of an Israeli soldier by Gaza militants, and an ensuing Israeli military campaign in the strip laid bare the shortcomings of the unilateral formula.
The Lebanon war left Israelis with even less enthusiasm for further territorial concessions to the Arabs, causing Olmert to scuttle any unilateralist plans.
Raanan Gissin, a longtime adviser to Sharon, said Gaza militants and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas wouldn't have acted as boldly against Israel had Sharon been around.
"He himself was a deterrent element in Israel's strategic posture," Gissin said. "They respected him, they feared him in the Arab world. It is a very important element in such a volatile and continuously changing situation in which we find ourselves."
But Brom said relations with the Palestinians would not have evolved significantly differently under Sharon.
"The underlying problems wouldn't have been different," Brom said. "I think the deterioration in Gaza was expected after the withdrawal, in the absence of a political process."
Because Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza had already started under Sharon, he wouldn't have been able to carry out unilateral pullouts from the West Bank, either, he said.
"He would have been stuck, just like Ehud is stuck," Brom said, referring to Olmert.
When unilateralism was still on the agenda, Israel had frequently dismissed the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, as too weak to deliver a final peace accord.
Having abandoned that approach, Olmert has revived the notion of negotiating with Abbas, whose ability to maneuver is severely compromised by the militantly anti-Israel Hamas group, which swept Palestinian parliamentary elections just three weeks after Sharon's stroke.
Because Sharon was the supreme pragmatist, his policy on the Palestinians would have conformed with what best served the country -- and his own interests, said journalist Uzi Benziman of the Haaretz daily.
If Sharon hadn't suffered his debilitating stroke, then his Kadima Party would have won a dozen more seats in Israel's 120-member parliament than the 29 it captured under Olmert, giving him the power to take the daring actions he was known for, Benziman said.
A constellation of interests would have decided what direction he struck out in, he added.
"Sharon is an opportunist par excellence," Benziman said. "If it meshed with his agenda, then he would have talked to (Abbas)."
But if he had concluded that it would have been in his and Israel's interest to talk with Hamas -- which Olmert is boycotting for refusing to recognize Israel and disarm -- then he would have done that, too, Benziman added.
"He had no God," he said. |
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