Word: sharone
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last year or so I, along with many others in the liberal camp in Israel, have developed a deep respect for Sharon. His courageous decision to disengage from Gaza and dismantle the settlements that he himself had initiated took us all by surprise. At first we looked for any ulterior motives that might explain this turn of events. Was he doing this, we asked, in order to increase the number of settlements in the West Bank? But slowly we came to realize that the same man who we had loved to hate had changed. He was tired of blood...
...truth is that for most of my life I didn’t even like Ariel Sharon. In fact, I couldn’t stand him. I remember the night, in February 2001, when Sharon emerged from the political desert and won Israeli’s parliamentary elections, beating “our guy”—Ehud Barak. My whole family sat in silence in front of the TV, each person too depressed to talk. We couldn’t believe that he, who we regarded as a dangerous right-winger, was our new prime minister...
...almost every Saturday night I was home in Jerusalem on leave standing in front of Sharon’s house. There, along with a group of about twenty other diehards we demonstrated against his actions, dwelled on his alleged corruption, and yearned for a more moderate leader. For us, Sharon represented everything negative in Israeli politics. He was an uncompromising general. He understood only the language of force. He hid his true intentions...
Less than two months ago, Sharon decided to leave the conservative Likud party, which he himself had founded some 30 years earlier. He proceeded to establish a new party named Kadima, which in Hebrew means “forward.” And indeed, we Israelis felt that this was the direction in which he was leading us. Even Shimon Peres, our elder statesmen and the father of the peace camp, left his Labor party to join Kadima. As the head of his new party, Sharon asked the public for a final four years to make peace. And the public...
...that will discourage Israelis from seeking a deal with the Palestinians, because the Palestinians will appear incapable of implementing the promises they make. The "peace strategy" of President Mahmoud Abbas will not bear fruit, because the strategy of peace requires making unpopular decisions on the Palestinian side, as Sharon did on the Israeli side. And Palestinian leaders have been unwilling to do that. Now, Israel, too, may less willing to take bold steps...