'King of the Jews' Five Years After the Stroke: What Would Ariel Sharon Do?

What would happen, Ariel Sharon was asked in 2005, if Hamas took power in Gaza and started a new war?

“Israel would react relentlessly,” was the answer.

His autobiography is titled Warrior; he has been called Arik, King of the Jews by his supporters and the Butcher of Beirut by his detractors; both called him the Bulldozer. Is there any doubt that he meant what he said, that Israel would react relentlessly if Hamas took over Gaza and started another war?

We’ll never know, of course, because soon after that interview–five years ago today–Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke and cerebral hemorrhaging that led to the coma in which he still resides, suspended between life and death.

That question–what would Sharon do–would seem to have been made irrelevant the night of his incapacitation. But, in fact, it was just the opposite. Once the architect of democratic innovation (the creation of the Likud party), then the architect of great military victories (the stunning Suez crossing in the Yom Kippur War), then the architect of a united Greater Israel, Sharon was lastly the architect of the Gaza withdrawal, and the death–once and for all–of the idea of a Greater Israel.

The impact of this last reversal cannot be understated. Years ago, a longtime Mideast hand told me that Sharon once showed him a map detailing exactly how he was going to accomplish a Greater Israel. Now, Sharon left the party he created just so he could put the final nail in the coffin of the concept.

So what would Sharon do? “I’m not sure it’s possible to assess how he would behave,” Israeli columnist Shimon Shiffer told Lynn Sherr for a terrific 2009 Daily Beast column. Shiffer went on:

“One thing Mr. Sharon shares with the late Yitzhak Rabin, they belong to a generation of huge characters. The new generation of Israeli politicians, they look like dwarves when you compare them. Sharon had the possibility to lead the Israelis anywhere; you don’t have that with Netanyahu or Olmert or [Tzipi] Livni.”

Thus, with Sharon suspended between life and death, the Israeli people are as well–suspended between eras. Are they in the era of the Rabins and the Sharons, or the era of the Olmerts and the Livnis? Both? Neither?

As for the part about Sharon being able to lead Israelis anywhere–this is certainly true. I was at Hadassah Hospital the day before Sharon was scheduled to come in for a heart procedure. In preparing my reaction story on the tragedy, I spoke with numerous Israelis–left, right, center–and I heard from some of them the same refrain: I don’t agree with Kadima, but I will vote for them because of Sharon. He is a leader, and I will follow him.

To those who know Israeli politics, this is an extraordinary thing for an Israeli to say. It is also, per Shiffer, a product of a bygone era. It is difficult to imagine that phrase ever being uttered again, by any Israeli, about anyone.

So we are left to wonder: What would Sharon do? Would he have made peace with the Palestinians? Condoleezza Rice thinks so, telling Sherr it is the “logical conclusion” of her administration’s efforts. Henry Kissinger came close to saying so as well in a 2006 Washington Post column. This is understandable, as it fits nicely into the “Only Sharon could have…” storyline. But it’s also pure fantasy: the irony of Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal is that it proved that while even Israeli hardliners could take the steps necessary for peace, the Palestinians were simply incapable of doing so.

What would Sharon have done during the 2006 Lebanon war, in which Israeli leaders–of Sharon’s own Kadima party, no less–exasperatingly acted as though the war could have been won in the air alone? It’s doubtful Sharon–the brilliant and brazen ground forces commander–would have made the same mistake. After all, this is the man who characterized Israel’s successful counteroffensive against the Egyptian army in 1973 thus: “It was the same as 1967. The Egyptians came. We killed them. They left.”

But perhaps the most pressing “what if” concerns Gaza. What would Sharon have done about the rockets falling from Gaza post-disengagement?

When Israel finally sent the IDF into Gaza in December 2008, the operation was extremely well planned and executed. But it was halted before ousting Hamas or bringing back Gilad Shalit. So what would Sharon have done? This is a difficult question to answer, but I think Sharon would never leave Israeli citizens with the impression that Sderot and Ashkelon are not as important as Tel Aviv or Haifa, as Olmert did when he watched the rockets fall for far too long.

And when you look at it that way, you begin to understand just how different life in Israel would have been with Sharon still fully alive. My life, too, changed after I wrote that story in January 2006 about Sharon. It demonstrates just how difficult it is to come into Sharon’s orbit and remain unaffected.

Last month, Sharon was moved home to his family’s Negev ranch, though his condition remains the same. His condition, in fact, reflects that of the peace process–something that cannot yet be mourned or moved on from; a legacy hotly debated before it’s technically over; something everybody wants to rise from its limbo and lead the region to peace and prosperity though almost nobody believes it will happen.

But perhaps more important than what Sharon would do, is what Sharon would say. Sharon believed first and foremost that Israel must be proud of its identity as a Jewish state, and that Zionism needs Judaism the way humans need oxygen. And he would tell Israelis that they don’t need him, and how silly is their self-doubt. Here is how he concludes his memoirs, and how any discussion on Sharon should conclude itself:

“We also know that in the face of a mountain of problems, our parents and we ourselves have managed the most remarkable achievements. So when I consider how hard it looks now, I think back to when I was a child, working with my father on that arid slope of land, walking behind him to plant the seeds in the earth he had turned with his hoe. When I felt too exhausted to go on, he would stop for a moment to look backwards to see how much we had already done. And that would always give me heart for what remained.”