by David Landau
For the Palestinian president, Defensive Shield had been a heavy, though not a mortal, blow. Ironically, the IDF’s attacks on the PA security forces and its ransacking of government buildings vindicated Arafat’s claim that he was powerless to impose his authority on Hamas and the other militant groups. The Israelis, however, were past caring, having effectively given up on any security cooperation with the rais and his multiheaded security apparatus.
In many of the towns and refugee camps, street power now passed to the militants, with armed gangs of al-Aqsa Brigades and others roaming around uninhibited, brandishing their weapons, and meting out summary and brutal justice to alleged collaborators with Israel. Ramallah and Jericho were the last redoubts of PA military control. Much of the PA’s civil administration managed to continue functioning, though—schools, hospitals, municipal services. But without effective policing, law enforcement and tax collection faltered. Daily life deteriorated. Freedom of movement, which had been hampered by Israeli roadblocks since the start of the intifada, was now even more severely constrained. Roads between villages, even between neighborhoods in the same town, were severed by mounds of earth or concrete cubes piled up by army bulldozers. The effect on the economy was direct and disastrous. Tens of thousands of working people joined the lists of the unemployed. Many of them turned to the Hamas-affiliated welfare agencies for material help.
By forcibly reopening the whole of the West Bank to IDF and Shin Bet control, Defensive Shield contributed in time to the suppression of the intifada, and in particular to the detection and prevention of suicide bombings. Nevertheless, Defensive Shield gave Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, pause for thought about the limits of military power deployed against a nation in revolt. Despite the show of force, despite the killing and capturing of militants, among them senior figures in the various armed organizations, despite the deployment of the army and the Shin Bet throughout the West Bank, terror attacks continued. More and more influential Israelis now joined the growing clamor among the public for a “security fence,” a barrier between the West Bank and Israel that would physically block the suicide bombers on their way to murder and death. Barak had ordered staff work on the fence toward the end of his term, but when Sharon swept him from office, the idea seemed to have been swept out with him.
Sharon’s popularity surged after Defensive Shield, but so did support for the fence. In a Maariv poll published in June 2002, 69 percent of those questioned favored building a fence, and only 25 percent opposed it. “Perhaps this is the secret of the fence’s broad popularity,” wrote the analyst Chemi Shalev. “It’s both a physical barrier and a symbolic, emotional bulwark, an opaque screen behind which people feel they can push the Palestinians and all the grief they bring with them and, as far as most people are concerned, the settlers too.”
Sharon could no longer ignore the public demand. On June 23, the cabinet formally approved plans for the first stage of the separation fence. It would stretch for seventy miles, from Salem on the northwestern tip of the West Bank south to Kassem, opposite Netanya. It would hug the old green line on parts of its route but would periodically belly into the West Bank to encompass major Israeli settlements. Some of this bellying would take in Palestinian villages, too. Two other small stretches of fence were also approved, north and south of Jerusalem, both of them on West Bank land. The Defense Ministry announced the creation of a new department that would supervise construction of this first stage and prepare for the subsequent stages that would eventually seal off the entire West Bank.
For Sharon, the decision to build the fence was his first substantive break with the settlers and with the pristine dogma of “Greater Israel.” This was not mere talk of a hypothetical Palestinian state arising from a hypothetical negotiation at some vague time in the future; it was the tangible and immediate consequence of unilateral action that the government was taking. It would mean that farther-flung settlements that Sharon himself had deliberately located in the Palestinian heartland would find themselves on the wrong side of a fence. Sharon and the ministers could contend all they wished that the fence was solely a security barrier with no political significance. No one believed that, least of all the settlers who would be crossing through it each day on their way to and from work in Israel.
The long struggle on which Sharon now embarked—against the Palestinians, against the Americans, against world opinion, and against Israel’s own high court—over the precise route of the separation fence was itself the most convincing proof that he understood full well that the fence would become the baseline for a future border. Arguably, Sharon’s decision to build the fence was no less momentous or historically significant than his later decision to disengage from Gaza and dismantle the settlements there and in the northern West Bank. The two decisions, in fact, need to be seen as an integral progression along a path of unilateralism that Sharon was steadily adopting as his overarching strategy toward the conflict.q
Unilateralism could exist and flourish, however, only to the extent that the international community, and especially of course the Americans, forbore to insist on bilateralism—that is, on a credible peace negotiation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. As his good luck would have it, the very next day after the fence decision by the cabinet in Jerusalem, Sharon and the world received public and formal confirmation from Washington that as far as George W. Bush was concerned, negotiation with Yasser Arafat was no longer a viable option.
“Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership,” the president declared in a long-expected, meticulously drafted statement on the Middle East. With Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Rice at his side in the Rose Garden of the White House, Bush called “on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty.” Bush’s message was starkly clear: as long as Arafat stood at the head of the Palestinian people, the United States would not be promoting or supporting their claim to statehood.
Bush reiterated his “vision of two states living side by side in peace and security.” But he immediately added—and this was critical in Sharon’s eyes—“There is simply no way to achieve that peace until all parties fight terror.” The order of business, then, was to be: first fight terror, and only then make progress toward peace. “Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure.” Even the short-range American demands, that Israel pull back its troops to the pre-intifada line and cease settlement building, were preceded by “As we make progress toward security …” The president added that the PA was tainted by “official corruption. A Palestinian state will require a vibrant economy, where honest enterprise is encouraged by honest government.
“When the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors,” Bush continued, “the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East.” As for the eventual full realization of his two-state vision, “The final borders, the capital and other aspects of this state’s sovereignty will be negotiated between the parties as part of a final settlement.”
“Dismantle their infrastructure,” whatever that meant, was a recognizably Israeli phrase. And small wonder: Sharon and his top aides had been intimately involved in the American drafting process, offering language and arguing about the wording almost till the moment of delivery. The Israeli input began during Defensive Shield, when Efraim Halevy, the outgoing head of the Mossad, brainstormed with his senior staffers with a view to offering Sharon a forward-looking exit strategy once the fighting was done. The Mossad
men came up with a plan called “An Alternative Leadership for the Palestinian People.”
Unbeknownst to Halevy and the Mossad, the IDF planning branch under Giora Eiland had been brainstorming, too, and it came up with very similar ideas. Halevy and Eiland were invited separately to Sharon’s residence in Jerusalem for breakfast on the same morning. Halevy attests that the prime minister’s appetite at his breakfast—the second—gave no hint that he had already eaten once with the army general. Both were invited to the ranch the next day for further discussion. Sharon instructed them to go together to Jordan and Egypt and then to Washington and other friendly capitals to sell their idea.
In the Roosevelt Room at the White House, the Israeli officials made their presentation to assembled Brahmins from several departments of the Bush administration. “Why Arafat is not capable of becoming a viable partner for a peace negotiation,” Halevy began reading from a lengthy document he had prepared in English. “He does not really want to establish a Palestinian state at this time.” In London, Halevy recalled, he sat on the carpet explaining it to Tony Blair and his adviser David Manning in the residential part of 10 Downing Street. “I cannot recall why we were sitting on the carpet, but we were.” From London he went on to Moscow. Reading from his document, Halevy assured his interlocutors that “significant persons in the PA will cooperate in an intelligent and sophisticated plan of action designed to elevate Arafat to the position of ‘symbolic’ leader.”
The Palestinians, who sent a senior minister, Nabil Shaath, to Washington at the last moment to influence the drafting, were aghast at the content of the president’s speech. But Arafat gave stern orders to welcome it and not display their dismay in public. Sharon, in mirror image, made sure there was no crowing from his side.
The transition in the Prime Minister’s Bureau from Shani to Dov Weissglas, Sharon’s longtime personal lawyer, was unexpected and unexplained. But the bureau weathered it without serious disruption. “One Friday midday,” Marit Danon recalled, “I get a call from Uri Shani, who tells me he’s leaving. He didn’t say why, and I didn’t want to pry. I was in the supermarket later, standing at the checkout line, when the prime minister phones. ‘Everything’s going to stay exactly the same,’ he says. I was worried but couldn’t speak too freely with all the other shoppers around, so I just said, ‘I hope so.’ This needled him. ‘I tell you everything will be the same! You’ll see.’ He seemed to feel he needed to persuade me.”
With Shani gone and the gregarious, easygoing Weissglas in his place, someone else was going to have to run the bureau if it was to retain the style and standards of crisp efficiency that Shani had maintained. That someone was Danon. With the tacit consent of everyone from Sharon down, she now became the fulcrum around which the disciplined working of the office revolved. Weissglas made the decisions; Danon made sure they were implemented. By now, fifteen months into his prime ministership, Sharon was visibly more comfortable and confident, sometimes even relaxed in his job, which he clearly had begun to enjoy. But he was rarely happy.
Every night, says Danon, before he left the office, no matter how late it was, Sharon would pause for a moment at the photographs of Lily that he had hung on the wall opposite his desk. He would stand and look at them and then walk on through the door.
He was an elderly widower who lived with his family. On Sunday mornings I’d sometimes ask him how his weekend had been, and he would reply, “Marit, I’m a lonely man.” That’s what he’d answer. I’d say, “Prime Minister, how can you say that? You’re surrounded by your lovely grandchildren, your family …” He needed married life. But I’m not sure if after Lily’s death he was open to it anymore. He spoke of Lily very frequently, of the deep friendship between them. Clearly she had been his pillar of support and at the same time his mouth and eyes to the world. He wasn’t a man for small talk; she fulfilled that side of him.
There was a picture of Gur on the wall, too. None of Margalit, though he’d speak of her, too. He spoke of her with respect and admiration, as a strong and very able, competent woman. She had risen very young to become a top psychiatric nurse. Of Gur he spoke with great pain. It was hard for me. Awkward. Sometimes I had to control myself not to cry in his presence.
Sharon took his loneliness home to the prime minister’s official residence, a modest stone house in the suburb of Rehavia, surrounded since Rabin’s assassination by high walls and watchtowers. “He didn’t like it,” says Danon.
The residence radiated coldness as far as he was concerned. He’d use it for official events. And for midday naps. But he could never feel warm there like he did at the ranch, with Gilad’s family. The ranch was enveloping, embracing. The children, the farm, the animals, the ground itself. I’ve never known anyone who loved the land so much. Loved the clods of earth.
He had a little button under the cabinet table which connected him straight to me in the office downstairs. Many times in the middle of cabinet meetings he would buzz, I would go running upstairs in my high heels, and he would give me a little note: “Please call Gilad and ask how many millimeters of rain have fallen at the ranch.” Or “Please call Gilad and find out how many ewes have given birth.” He was very verbal, incredibly verbal for a man. He used to say to me, when it rained, “What I would like now is to be lying in front of my burning hearth, wrapped up in a coarse blanket …” In the last two years he rarely slept in Jerusalem. Even if his day ended at 2:00 a.m., he would go back to the ranch. By helicopter or by car, whichever the security detail decided.
Meirav Levy started working for Sharon before the 2001 election as his makeup artist, applying white powder to his scalp to make his famous forelock look even more striking and a touch of rouge to his cheeks. By the time he became prime minister, she was in constant attendance. She, too, witnessed his aversion to the official residence. During the first term, Omri would sometimes come and sleep over. But after the 2003 elections Omri became a member of the Knesset, and that ended. Sharon was very alone. He would wake up alone in the morning and come home at night—alone again. The kitchen staff would arrive at 6:30–7:00, but he would be up from 5:00, with nothing to drink. He didn’t make coffee himself. He would stay in his room, listening to the radio, listening to reports from his military staff, listening to Ra’anan Gissin’s press survey over the phone. He could not look out of the windows: they were kept closed and curtained for security reasons. At the ranch, an aide recalled,
when he drew back the curtains, he’d see a rolling landscape. Here—just bulletproof glass and a courtyard … And at the ranch he’d see the children. They’d come into his room and give him a good-morning kiss. That would make his day.
When he was alone in Jerusalem, he wouldn’t have much for breakfast. He’d try to diet. He’d invite his driver, Gilbert, or the security guards to join him. They’d have slept in the house; they had little rooms downstairs … By 7:00 he’d be on the road to the office. If he was at the ranch, he’d leave at 6:30. He liked to invite people for breakfast sometimes, and then he’d lay on a nice spread.
This is something of an understatement. Sharon’s breakfasts, both at the ranch and at the residence, were famous for their rich variety of fishes and cheeses, eggs and vegetables, breads and honeys and other delectables with which he would assiduously ply his guests. He himself was known to partake of two or even three breakfasts, one at the ranch, one at the residence, and one at the office, in the course of a morning. In one instance, attested to separately by his spokesman Perlman and his military secretary Kaplinsky, he moved seamlessly from breakfast to lunch without any diminution of appetite. “One day,” Perlman recounts,
there was a huge breakfast at the ranch, and we ate and ate and ate. At midday, Kaplinsky and I slowly and heavily made our way to the car and drove up to the office in Tel Aviv. Arik meanwhile gets himself organized and flies up by helicopter. At about one o’clock he sees us in the corridor. “Er, come in for a moment, would you?” So we come in. No sooner had we sat down than one of th
e kitchen staff walks in with three trays laden with mountains of rice and a half a chicken atop each one. Kaplan and I look at each other, and we both know we can’t eat anything. We’d barely finished feasting an hour earlier, after all. Sharon, slowly, slowly, cuts and eats, cuts and eats. He looks up at us. “Er, eat something, why don’t you? It’s really good.” “We can’t eat, Prime Minister.” He finishes his meal and then says, quietly, “Do you think it would be piggish of me if I just tasted a morsel of yours …?” He began tucking in, slowly and methodically, and finished both our portions, too.
“It’s a true story,” Kaplinsky confirms.
But Arik Sharon’s eating was not just a matter of quantities; it was equally a matter of manners. As a little boy, he had to wield his knife and fork with a book tucked under each arm. If he dropped the books, the food would be taken away. To his last day he would eat like this [holding the knife and fork with his arms tightly at his sides], which wasn’t easy with his big belly … And the pace of his eating was also critical. He would eat very slowly, carefully chewing every mouthful. He would look at every bite before putting it in his mouth. He could eat all day—start in the morning and finish at night. By the same token, he could eat nothing for hours. But if someone said, “Would you like something to eat?” and ordered food, he’d immediately lose his concentration and start asking, “What’s happening with the food? When are they bringing the food?” We’d say, “You’ve ordered falafel from a particular shop. It takes half an hour to get there, half an hour back, a few minutes to pick up the order.” But he’d say, “Phone up and find out. Maybe something’s happened to the messenger …” Once I witnessed him eat nine portions of falafel one after another. How? Slowly…
