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The former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has died at the age of 85 - eight years after
a severe stroke left him in a persistent vegetative state. Despite being unconscious for the past
eight years Sharon has remained an ever present figure in Israeli-Palestinian politics and
many of the decisions he took before 2006 continued to have huge ramifications for the
region today.
Ariel Sharon was born in Palestine on the 27th February 1928. 20 years before the state
of Israel was declared on the 14th May 1948 and while the area was still under the control
of Britain. From a young age Sharon was a hard line supporter of a Jewish state in Palestine
and in 1942 joined the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary organisation that represented
the majority of Jews living in Palestine between 1920 and 1948. The Haganah fought against
Palestinian Arab groups opposed to the Jewish settlement of Palestine and when Britain refused
to open Palestine up to unlimited Jewish immigration following World War II the organisation turned
to terrorist activities bombing railways and ships used to deport Jewish immigrants.
Following the Declaration of the Israeli state in 1948 Haganah became the national army known
as the Israel Defense Forces or IDF and for the 25 years that followed Sharon fought in
all of Israel's wars including the 1948 and 1967 Arab Israeli wars. In 1973 Sharon retired
from the military and moved into politics running in elections for Israel's parliament
Knesset as a member of the right wing Likud party. This is the same party that Israel's
current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu belongs to. However before the elections could
actually be held the 1973 Arab Israeli war erupted and Sharon was called back to reserve
service. He later won a seat in the Knesset but resigned in 1974 to return to the army
before becoming a special security adviser to Israel's then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin
roll on three years however and Sharon is back in the Knesset.
In August 1981 he became the country's defense minister reportedly masterminding Israel's
invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The aim of the invasion was to target Palestinian guerrillas
led by Yasser Arafat who were then living in Southern Lebanon and carrying out raids
on the Lebanese Israeli border. Although the invasion did result in the expulsion of Yasser
Arafat and his fighters from Lebanon Israel was condemned by the world when its troops
allowed Christian militia's allied to the Jewish state to massacre as many as 2,000
Palestinians living in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in southern Beirut.
You might remember that we featured the Shatila refugee camp in our recent video on the Palestinian
refugees forced to flee Syria for Lebanon.
An Israeli investigation later found Sharon to be indirectly but personally responsible
for the massacre and in February 1983 he was forced to stand down. By the following year
he was back in government however going on to hold a string of key government positions
including Minister of Construction and Housing between 1990 and 1992. Sharon was staunch
supporter of the Israeli settler communities i.e. Israeli Jews who were illegally living
on occupied Palestinian land and as housing minister oversaw the biggest building drive
of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza since Israel first occupied these areas
of Palestinian land back in 1967. Despite Sharon's record as defense minister, in 1998
the then Prime Minister Netanyahu controversially appointed him to the post of Foreign Minister
and following the election of Ehud Barak's labour party to government in 1999 Sharon
took over from Netanyahu as the leader of the Likud party and the following year made
a decision that was to have severe consequences.
On the 28th September 2000 Sharon paid a visit to the compound surrounding the Al Aqsa mosque
which is located in the Muslim quarter of the old city of Jerusalem. The site of the
mosque and its compound is known as Temple Mount to Jews and Haram al-Sharif or Noble
Sanctuary to Muslims and is sacred in both religions. The area also lies on Palestinian
land captured by Israel in the 1967 war and is at the centre of a wider dispute between
Israelis and Palestinians over Jerusalem. Following his visit Sharon reportedly said
he'd gone to the compound with a message of peace but journalists on the ground said the
act was clearly intended to underline Israeli claims to the city of Jerusalem and its holy
sites.
The visit sparked a wave of violent protests and fighting between Israelis and Palestinians
that escalated into the second Palestinian intifada or uprising. By the end of the first
year more than 800 people had died. Critics say Sharon knew his visit to the compound
would trigger violence and that it was part of a longer political game plan in which Israelis
would turn to him as a tough leader in a time of conflict. In February 2001 Sharon was elected
as Prime Minister in a landslide victory pledging to achieve security and true peace. This same
year relatives of the victims of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre began proceedings
in Belgium to have Sharon indited for war crimes. However in June 2002 a Belgian appeals
court said that such a case could not proceed against a person who is not in Belgium. That
same month Sharon's government began work on a part wall part fence structure dividing
some parts of the West Bank from Israel and other parts of the West Bank. This barrier
is commonly referred to as "the security fence" by the Israeli government and its supporters
and the separation wall or apartheid wall by Palestinians and critics of Israel. Building
of the barrier followed a spate of suicide bombings and attacks by Palestinian militants
inside the Israeli state during the 1990s and the early part of the 21st century but
gaps in the structure and the insubstantial nature of many sections of it suggest that
security was not the true driving force behind its construction. What is more the barrier
is not being built on Israels pre-1967 boundary with the West Bank and many areas of occupied
Palestinian land are now included on the Israeli side including several Jewish settlements.
However in what was seen as a betrayal by many of his supporters in August 2005 Sharon
authorized Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza meaning that all of the 19,000 or
so Israeli settlers living there were forced to leave along with Israel's living in another
four settlements in the northern West Bank. This was the first time that Israel had agreed
to dismantle settlements built on Palestinian land seized in the 1967 war but the move proved
so unpopular among the members of his own party that three months later Sharon left
Likud calling for the dissolution of parliament and forming a new centrist party called Kadima
meaning forward in English. Sharon looked set to be re-elected prime minister in new
elections up until December 2005 when Sharon suffered a minor stroke. Less than four weeks
later he was then admitted to hospital after suffering a more extreme stroke that left
him in a coma like state for the remaining eight years of his life.
In April of the following year the Israeli cabinet declared Sharon permanently incapacitated
formerly ending his term as prime minister.