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| By Associated Press January 16, 2006 |
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Both Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon did the unthinkable: Arafat recognized Israel's existence and Sharon gave up the Gaza Strip. With Arafat dead and Sharon felled by a stroke, both Palestinians and Israelis are having to adjust to life without their historic, larger-than-life leaders.
"Israel, like the Palestinians, is witnessing no more icons ... no more warriors," said Mahdi Abdul-Hadi, the director of the Palestinian think tank Passia.
For the Palestinians, the loss of an icon has coincided with an alarming slide into chaos, though some argue it is giving Palestinian society more democracy. For Israel, Sharon's likely incapacitation could endanger his unfinished mission of drawing Israel's final borders, especially if his heirs lack the strength to uproot Jewish settlers from the West Bank.
Sharon had a massive stroke last week, and since it seems likely he suffered some brain damage, most Israelis assume he will not return to power.
Both Arafat and Sharon changed history in ways that many see as irreversible: Arafat by recognizing Israel in the 1990s, laying the groundwork for eventual Palestinian statehood, and Sharon by withdrawing from Gaza and building a barrier in the West Bank, effectively killing the dream of a Greater Israel incorporating captured Arab lands.
To be sure, Arafat and Sharon despised each other and had little in common. Arafat died on Nov. 11, 2004, at a low point - hamstrung by cronyism and under siege by Israel, which accused him of being behind a wave of suicide bombings. Sharon's stroke came at his political peak; he had successfully pulled off the Gaza withdrawal and had founded a new party that looked poised to sweep him into a third term in elections March 28.
Some Israelis and Palestinians wince at the idea of drawing any comparison between the two leaders. Each is widely hated by the other side as a terrorist or a war criminal. But no one can deny the drama that each brought to the scene and the adoring following they attracted.
Arafat's funeral provoked a huge outpouring of grief, and Sharon's stroke has plunged Israelis into a somber mood, with many scarcely able to imagine life without him.
"Each hour we are sitting with the radio and we are praying. From the beginning he has represented the Jewish people," said Yehuda Halili, who with his wife, three daughters and a homemade get-well sign was keeping a vigil outside Sharon's hospital.
Some argue that the great symbolism attached to Arafat, the revolutionary, and Sharon, the warrior, made Mideast peacemaking harder.
"A strong argument can be made that if you remove these people with emotional baggage that they carry for the other side, the chances of a resolution becomes easier," said Daoud Kuttab, director of the Institute of Modern Media at Jerusalem's Al-Quds University.
Nonsense, said Israeli political analyst and veteran journalist Hirsh Goodman.
The current chaos enveloping the West Bank and Gaza - with roving gangs of gunmen shooting up public buildings, kidnapping foreigners and firing rockets into Israel - precludes a return to peace talks "because there's nobody on the Palestinian side that the Israelis feel can deliver any cogent agreement," Goodman said.
Many Palestinians still hold out hope that Arafat's businesslike successor, Mahmoud Abbas, can reverse the decline, but wonder if he has the clout and charisma to do more than that.
When Ariel Sharon appeared in public, Israelis often greeted him with chants of "Arik, King of Israel," affectionately calling out his nickname. Former Israeli peace negotiator Amos Guiora said he doubted Sharon's political successors would ever be embraced as warmly.
That may not be such a bad thing for democracy, he said, because ordinary leaders have to bring in more people to make decisions - but "we are a people who need a father."
"Now we are a little bit fatherless," Guiora said.
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