TITLE: The Good Soldier Arik
AUTHOR: Uriya Shavit
PUB: Ha'aretz
DATE: January 12, 2001
If Ariel Sharon is elected prime minister in three weeks, on February 6, it will be his second stint at leading the country. The first time was 19 years ago. In August 1981, Sharon was appointed minister of defense in the second government of Likud leader Menachem Begin. The government rested on a narrow base of support, its posture was hawkish, few cabinet ministers had an understanding of military affairs, and the person heading the government was tired and ill. That combination of circumstances made Sharon the dominant figure in Israel from the day he took office as defense minister until his ouster a year and a half later.When he left office under a heavy cloud, his failure appeared total, even to many of his supporters. He left behind a government in severe crisis, a deeply divided country, battered relations with the United States, and a dejected army that had to keep fighting in a campaign it had no chance of winning. His dream of becoming prime minister seemed forever shattered.
In the 17 years that have gone by since he was forced to resign as defense minister, Sharon has been a highly influential political mediator, the leader of a camp in the Likud and a prominent economic minister. But the scars of Lebanon, which have yet to heal, always blocked his way, and he never came close to holding a position that would make him a candidate to lead the country again. Until, that is, the advent of the current election campaign blurred Sharon and his record, and brought him to within a whisker of the Prime Minister's Bureau.When Sharon was named defense minister, he was an experienced politician and a decorated soldier, but also a personality with a highly checkered biography. Sharon was born in Kfar Malal, near Kfar Sava, in 1928. He joined the Haganah, the official pre-state underground military organization, in 1945. In the War of Independence of 1948-1949, he was a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade and proved himself a first-rate fighter and a natural leader with the ability to infuse his men with confidence. In 1953, he was appointed commander of Unit 101, which was set up to carry out retaliatory raids against the fedayeen, the Arab terrorist squads that mounted cross-border attacks into Israel.
In October 1953, in the wake of the murder of a Jewish woman and her two children in Yehud, east of Tel Aviv, Unit 101 and a company of paratroopers carried out a reprisal raid against the village of Kibya, in Samaria, then under Jordanian control. The raiding party blew up 45 houses in the village, and 69 residents, half of them women and children, were killed. The international community raised a furor and Israel's image was tainted.
"The majority of the Israeli public supported the operation, but felt the results were excessive," the military analyst Ze'ev Schiff wrote in a 1965 study of the raid. But Sharon's status as a daring commander and warrior was reinforced.
In January 1954, Unit 101 merged with the Paratroops Battalion. Sharon was made the commander of the combined force. The paratroopers executed a series of reprisal and preemptive raids, conceived by Sharon, against targets in Jordan, Egypt and Syria.
"As was the case at Kibya, many of these missions took on the most unexpected proportions, surprising both the government and the army, which had initially authorized them," the journalist Uzi Benziman wrote in his biography "Sharon: An Israeli Caesar" (English edition: Adama Books, 1985). In an attack on an Egyptian army base in the Gaza Strip, in February 1955, 38 Egyptian soldiers were killed and 44 were wounded.
"The Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, stated that, as a result of this raid, he became convinced that peace between Israel and Egypt would be impossible," Benziman added.
In the Sinai Campaign of 1956, Sharon's forces attacked the Mitla Pass with the aim of seizing its western extremity and advancing rapidly from there to the Suez Canal. The troops soon found themselves caught in a lethal cross fire, in what became one of the most difficult battles in the history of the Israel Defense Forces. Sharon's superiors were furious. He was accused of breaching discipline and of being responsible for a non-essential operation.
A year later, he was sent to study in the staff officers' school at Kimberley, England. Subsequently, he served as commander of an infantry brigade and of the Infantry School, as head of the Northern Command operations staff and as chief of the IDF's Training Department, by now with the rank of major general.
In the Six-Day War of 1967, Sharon was commander of an armored division and won broad praise for his performance. Two years later, he was named head of Southern Command, where he worked to fortify the Bar Lev Line along the Suez Canal.
During the final days of the War of Attrition at the Suez Canal, Sharon retaliated against Palestinian terror in the Gaza Strip with measures that were sharply criticized, particularly by sources outside of Israel: Thousands of homes in the refugee camps were demolished in order to make access roads. Hundreds of young Palestinian men were arrested and deported to Lebanon and Jordan, while political leaders were exiled to Sinai. Some 600 relatives of suspected terrorists - including women and children - were transported to the detention camp in southern Sinai.
Between June and December of 1971, 104 terrorists were eliminated [as opposed to 179 people during the four years preceding that period]. Hundreds of Palestinians were detained; many others fled or turned themselves in. In June 1971, in Gaza, there were 34 incidents of sabotage. In December of that year, there was only one.
In June 1973, when he realized that his prospects of becoming chief of staff were slim, Sharon left the army and embarked on a political career. He was the moving force behind the creation of the Likud, the rightist alignment of parties that would become the central political force in the country in the decades to come. He intended to run for the Knesset on behalf of the Likud, but two-and-a-half weeks after the election campaign began - on October 6 - the Yom Kippur war broke out.
Sharon was recalled to service as commander of an armored division in Sinai. He and his forces crossed the Suez Canal, and many Israelis believed that it was Sharon who precipitated the turning point in the war. However, the bitter relations that developed between him and his commanders overshadowed his military achievement.
While still in uniform, Sharon criticized the judgment of the IDF's high command. In reaction, the chief of staff canceled Sharon's emergency appointment as a division commander, and it was even suggested that he be placed on trial.
Following the war, in December 1973, Sharon was elected to the Knesset, only to retire a year later. From June 1975 to March 1976, he served as special advisor to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
In advance of the 1977 elections, Sharon established a new party, called Shlomzion. That political adventure left many of his comrades offended, and produced only two Knesset seats. Following the elections, Sharon quickly joined forces with the Likud again, and was appointed minister of agriculture and chairman of the ministerial committee for settlement affairs in the first government of Menachem Begin. In the government, he was considered the patron of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), the militant settlers' movement.
When Ezer Weizman resigned as defense minister, Begin did not appoint Sharon in his place. But, after the 1981 elections, in the wake of Sharon's major contribution to the Likud's narrow victory, Begin named him defense minister in his second government. Sharon's adventurist past stirred considerable anxiety among large sections of the public. Others, though, claimed Sharon would prove a pleasant surprise; if there is one politician in Israel who can bring about peace, these people said, Sharon is that politician. Sharon did not wait long before moving to realize their expectations.In October 1981, two months after his appointment as defense minister, Ariel Sharon ordered the General Staff to prepare a detailed plan for a war in Lebanon. Four goals were set: to free the residents of Israel's north from shelling by Palestinians based in southern Lebanon; to eliminate, militarily and politically, the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Beirut; to bring about the establishment of a Lebanese government led by Maronite Christians, which would sign a peace treaty with Israel; and to distance forces of the Syrian army from the Beirut area.
The operational orders for the incursion were completed in January 1982. However, the government did not approve the plan. On June 3, 1982, in London, Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, was shot and seriously wounded by a terrorist of the Abu Nidal organization. In retaliation, the government on June 4, a Friday, ordered the bombing of PLO bases and ammunition dumps in Beirut. The PLO responded by shelling Northern Galilee. On Saturday night, the cabinet met in emergency session and decided to send the IDF into Lebanon.
"Operation Peace for Galilee," as the invasion was called, was launched on June 6. The cabinet ministers were convinced that they had approved a lightning operation that would be halted when Israeli troops reached a point 40 kilometers inside Lebanon, thus creating a buffer zone between the PLO and northern Israel.
The public was equally convinced. Support for Sharon in the first days of the war was overwhelming. To his rabid supporters he was "Arik, king of Israel." His sponsorship was requested for an exhibition on the war and its achievements that was planned for the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds. A public opinion poll conducted by the Pori Institute showed that the defense minister's popularity had risen from 48.9 percent to 59.6 percent.
Yitzhak Berman, the Speaker of the seventh Knesset and the minister of energy in Begin's second government, recalled this week: "At that meeting before the war, I had the impression that not enough homework had been done. It was hinted, by Sharon, of course, that we were counting on the support of the [Lebanese] Christians. But the cabinet did not have sufficient information about the balance of forces in Lebanon.
"Why did I not ask about this in the meeting? Because we came unprepared. The whole thing was unexpected. Sharon stated four times in the meeting that the scope of the operation was no more than 40 kilometers. When I came out of the meeting I thought Sharon would not go beyond that. Simcha Ehrlich [the deputy prime minister and, like Berman, a member of the Liberal Party] told me that 'He will take us farther,' but I believed Sharon. I was sympathetic to him. Sharon maintains very pleasant human relations with people and I had a positive attitude toward him.
"There is one more thing that needs to be known. I have not talked about this before. The impression among the public is that during the meeting, the opinion within the cabinet was that the PLO had perpetrated the attack on Ambassador Argov. But there is proof that Sharon knew even before the meeting at which Operation Peace for Galilee was authorized, that the organization responsible was Abu Nidal, not the PLO."
Three days after the start of the operation, the IDF reached the outskirts of Beirut. The air force destroyed Syrian missile batteries, and there was heavy fighting between the IDF and the Syrian army around Lake Karoun (in the eastern sector) and near Jezzine (the central sector).
At this stage, some of the cabinet ministers began to understand that they did not know Sharon's true intentions, and to fear that they were losing control over the actions carried out by the IDF. Yitzhak Berman demanded that the cabinet discuss the goals and underlying strategy of the war, and he was seconded by other ministers. However, no such discussion was ever held.
On June 11, a cease-fire came into effect, but was immediately violated. On June 13, the IDF was already attacking the presidential palace in Beirut. According to Uzi Benziman's book, at the end of the war's first week, it became clear that the true goal of the operation was to bring about the election of Bashir Jemayel, the leader of the Christian Phalangists, as the president of Lebanon.
Former Knesset member and cabinet minister Binyamin Begin, the son of Menachem Begin, stated in an affidavit which he submitted to the court in Sharon's libel suit against Ha'aretz (see box): "In an article he published in Ma'ariv on August 12, 1987, Mr. Sharon confirmed that as minister of defense, he planned Operation Peace for Galilee such that it was intended from the outset to bring the IDF to the outskirts of Beirut.
"As to the question of whether Mr. Sharon misled the prime minister on this point, that can be answered by posing another question: Did prime minister Menachem Begin know, when Operation Peace for Galilee was launched, that the IDF intended to reach the outskirts of Beirut? Based on the above, the answer is that he did not. The prime minister intended to carry out an operation of the scope that was authorized by the cabinet, that is, up to 40 kilometers from the Israeli border, and with an estimated duration of two days."On June 14, the chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, stunned the country when he announced that 170 IDF soldiers had been killed in the fighting in Lebanon. Three days later, Major General Moshe Nativ, the head of the IDF's Manpower Branch, spoke of 214 dead. It was difficult to explain the discrepancy in the data, as relative calm had prevailed in the three days that elapsed between the two announcements.
The public began to suspect that the government was not telling the truth. On June 28, 800 activists of the Peace Now movement met in Jerusalem and demanded that Sharon resign. On July 4, thousands demonstrated in Tel Aviv, in what is now Rabin Square, with a similar demand. On July 14, 80 reservist officers and soldiers signed a letter asking the prime minister to permit them to serve inside Israel.
"Too many have been killed and are being killed by us in Lebanon, too much has been occupied, bombed and laid waste," they wrote. "There is a limit. This time we cannot take it anymore."
Sharon, for his part, accused the left of sabotaging the war effort. Criticism of the government was silenced. The IDF suspended its program of inviting writers and university lecturers to address soldiers, and military analysts were kept off Army Radio.
Nevertheless, the defense minister continued to command the support of the absolute majority in Israel.
On June 28, Ha'aretz reported: "Major General Aharon Yariv took over from Major General Yeshayahu Gavish who, in the past few days, had been Israel Television's military commentator. The switch was effected after the defense minister attacked Gavish (without mentioning his name) on the 'Week in Review' program on television for talking about diplomatic options as an alternative to the recent military moves."
Yitzhak Berman: "The nation was induced to collectively shut its eyes. The nation thought that the PLO was being punished. After all, the argument was that we were at the eleventh hour. That if we did not attack the PLO, Israel would be in danger. How is it that even after it turned out that there were only 15,000 PLO troops in Beirut, the public still was not convinced that the war was unnecessary?
"The explanation is that the public simply bought what it was sold. And you have to remember that Sharon was the defense minister and that he had charisma. At that time, he was not a controversial figure."
By August 1982, the IDF had encircled Beirut and stepped up the pressure on the PLO to evacuate its personnel from the city. The American mediator Philip Habib made progress in the negotiations. On August 12, the air force carried out a saturation bombing of Beirut.
The attack was construed as an attempt by Israel to torpedo the talks aimed at getting the PLO to leave Lebanon peacefully.
The bombing raid sparked outrage in both Washington and Jerusalem. Sharon was castigated by a number of cabinet ministers. "Not only the nation is confused, the government is also confused," the deputy prime minister, David Levy, said.
Ha'aretz reported on August 13 that, "U.S. President Ronald Reagan last night sent a message to Prime Minister Menachem Begin, which was described by a senior source in the administration as the most sharply worded since the start of the crisis in Beirut, sharper even than the agitated tone of the telephone calls between them. Reagan's message threatens that a serious deterioration in relations between the two countries will ensue if additional obstacles are placed in the way of the talks currently being conducted in Beirut."
Yitzhak Berman: "Why did I not demand Sharon's resignation in that meeting? Because Begin believed him so much. It was clear that a demand like that would have no chance. Already in the months before the war, I saw that Sharon was exerting an influence on him, that Begin was falling under Sharon's influence. That surprised me, because Begin had always taken a reserved attitude toward Sharon. I don't know why it happened. Maybe because of the state of his health. Begin was then in great agony because of the state of his health."On August 19, the negotiations on the expulsion of the PLO personnel from Beirut were completed, with Israel thereby achieving one of the war's major goals. (The evacuation took some 10 days and was completed by September 1.) But Sharon did not forget the other goals and remained convinced that they were within reach.
"I think we are on the brink of a new era," he told the daily Yedioth Ahronoth on August 20, 1982. "The fact that the PLO will no longer exist in Lebanon creates new opportunities in the region ... I believe we will reach a peace agreement with Lebanon and a total change of the situation in our region. A peace treaty with Lebanon will influence the security arrangements we are demanding in southern Lebanon."
The three months of war exacted a steep international price from Israel. Its image in the Western world as a peace-seeking state suffered a severe blow. Domestically, fundamental axioms about the army and its functions were challenged, and political checks and balances were undercut. But Sharon's status remained firm among the public, and his sense of power was stronger than ever.
Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci claims to have a tape recording of Sharon telling her that he never had any intention of entering Beirut, and adding that if he had been convinced that it was imperative for the IDF to enter the city, no one would have been able to prevent it. Democracy or not, he allegedly said, I would have entered even if the government had been against it - meaning, he explained, that he would have persuaded the cabinet ministers. Sharon denies ever saying this.
Yitzhak Berman: "I was not afraid of the possibility that Sharon would take over the country. I didn't believe that. I didn't think the state would let something like that happen. But Simcha Ehrlich was very much concerned about Sharon's growing strength. Ehrlich thought Sharon was a dangerous person who could seize control of the government."
Following the expulsion of the PLO from Beirut, Israeli spokesmen increasingly maintained that "Jordan is Palestine." In the interview to Fallaci, for example, Sharon said that "A Palestinian state already exists," so there is no need to establish another one. Israel, he said, would never permit the creation of a Palestinian state in the areas under its control. "No one will touch Judea and Samaria! Or Gaza either!" Judea and Samaria, he declared, "belong to us. They have been ours for thousands of years, eternally." And the same goes for the Gaza Strip.
Sharon's "Jordan is Palestine" campaign supported the claims that Israel's real goal in the Lebanon War was to bring about the expulsion of all the Palestinian refugees from Lebanon to Jordan in order to bring about the fall of King Hussein and the establishment of a Palestinian state in Jordan.
"The White House team, currently vacationing on the West Coast, yesterday joined the controversy over the new campaign that Israel is conducting under the headline 'Jordan is Palestine,'" Ha'aretz reported on September 1, 1982. "In reaction to the repeated pronouncements by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, the deputy spokesman of the White House stated that 'The Reagan administration, like the previous administrations, reiterates its commitment to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Jordan.'"
According to Yitzhak Berman, "The subject of 'Jordan is Palestine' did not come up in any cabinet meeting. Begin would not have permitted it to be raised. A discussion of that subject would have been tantamount to an admission that the eastern side of the Jordan is not ours, and Begin would not countenance that. Sharon never gave us any indication about that subject. The cabinet ministers did not discuss the matter amongst themselves.
"As for me, it was clear to me since 1967 that a Palestinian state would be established in the areas of Judea and Samaria. It was clear to me that the demographic balance in the territories would not enable us to rule over them."On August 23, Bashir Jemayel was elected president of Lebanon by the country's parliament, in accordance with Sharon's game plan, with the inauguration scheduled for September 23. On September 14, Jemayel visited the Phalangist headquarters in Beirut. A young man named Tanius Shartuni, working for an agent of Syrian Intelligence, placed a bomb in the building and detonated it by remote control. The building was destroyed; Jemayel's body was officially identified under the ruins five hours later. Sharon's vision of peace with Lebanon had suffered a devastating blow.
But despite Jemayel's assassination, and despite the warning signals concerning the ability and readiness of the Phalangists to forge an official alliance with Israel, Sharon refused to give up his dream. So the day after the killing of the president-elect of Lebanon, the IDF entered West Beirut.
"With all the pain and grief over the murder of the courageous leader Bashir Jemayel, the peaceful relations that are developing between the two nations - the Lebanese and the Israelis - will overcome this obstacle as well in order to bring peace and security between the two states," Sharon said on September 17.
Yitzhak Berman: "There is a theory that if Jemayel had not been assassinated, the war would have been successful. We forget that some time before the assassination, Begin met with him in Nahariya in order to further the idea of the agreement between Israel and Lebanon, but came out of the meeting disappointed. We also forget the declaration by Pierre Jemayel, Bashir's father, according to which the Maronite Christians would always be allied with Syria.
"In other words, the assassination of Jemayel was not the cause of the war's failure. How did it happen that Sharon did not understand that? The problem is that Sharon, even though he is an excellent soldier, is not a statesman. His diplomatic approach was childish."Two days after Jemayel's death, Sharon permitted the Phalangists to enter the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in West Beirut. The reason: to let the Phalangists look for terrorists who were still in the camps. The Phalangists operated freely in the camps for three days. To "avenge" the murder of their leader, they massacred some 800 Palestinians, including children, women and elderly people.
When the scale of the massacre became known and photographs of the bodies in the refugee camps began to be published in the world press, Israel was held directly responsible for the atrocity. The Israeli public was shocked. On September 25, a huge demonstration was held in Tel Aviv demanding the resignation of Begin and Sharon and the establishment of a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate the massacre.
Sharon's popularity plummeted to the point where the monthly Monitin reported that only one percent of the public continued to view him as the preferred candidate for prime minister.
Reeling under the public pressure, the cabinet announced on September 28 that a state commission of inquiry would be established. Sharon stated that he recognized the concept of "ministerial responsibility," but did not resign. The commission was headed by Supreme Court President Yitzhak Kahan, and its members included Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak and Major General (Res.) Yona Efrat.
"President Ronald Reagan and his senior advisers would like to see the removal of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon," Ha'aretz reported on September 22. "The administration's confidence in Israel has reached a nadir in the past few days. The massacre in the refugee camps has persuaded the president that without a shake-up of the Israeli government, 'Anything is possible there.'
"In the wake of a series of disputes with Israel over the past few weeks, the top levels of the administration have lost their faith in the government's judgment, and places most of the blame for this on what one official called 'the ruinous influence of the defense minister.'"On November 11, the building that housed Israel's military government headquarters in the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon was rocked by a tremendous explosion. Within seconds, the seven-story structure was reduced to a heap of rubble. Seventy-six IDF soldiers, border policemen and Shin Bet security agents were killed. Even though the blast was not due to sabotage - but by poor construction and a mixture of gas and air that collected in a certain part of the structure, an investigative commission found later - the scale of the disaster exacerbated the debate in Israel about Israel's continued presence in Lebanon.
Following a visit to some of those who had been wounded in the blast at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Sharon stated: "The national disaster that occurred in the military government headquarters building must not weaken our staying power concerning those things that are required for the peace and security of the State of Israel."
"Defense Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday evening attended a party at the Weizmann Institute, before going on to Tyre to visit the site of the military government building where the disaster occurred. Mr. Sharon was at the party from 10 P.M. until 1 A.M. and only the following morning, on Friday, visited Tyre. Israel Television did not report Sharon's participation at the party," Ha'aretz noted on November 14.
On January 8, 1983, a bus carrying 20 people which left from the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv was attacked by a terrorist squad. The terrorists threw two fragmentation grenades at the bus as it passed the corner of Bar Yohai and Schocken streets. The first grenade struck the bus, but bounced off it and exploded on the street, which fortunately was empty at the time.
The second grenade entered the vehicle and exploded, wounding a number of people, most of whom were released from hospital later that same day. Earlier, terrorists attacked a bus that was carrying soldiers from Lebanon to weekend leave; 21 soldiers were wounded, four of them moderately. The squad's base of departure was in an area of Lebanon controlled by the Syrians, north of the Beirut-Damascus highway.
Concern was expressed in Israel at the fact that the terrorists were becoming increasingly bolder in attacking IDF vehicles and convoys in Lebanon: "The number of people - soldiers and civilians - who were killed in terrorist actions in Israel between 1968 and 1980 is 629, and not 1,002, as Defense Minister Ariel Sharon claimed on Israel Television,' Ha'aretz reported on January 28, 1983.
"A check we carried out shows that the mistake stemmed from the fact that the minister or his advisers added to the number of those killed in terrorist acts in Israel European citizens who were killed in various countries of Europe in terrorist operations."Sharon's testimony to the Kahan Commission, part of which was public, stirred great public interest and weakened Sharon's position as defense minister in the cabinet and within the Likud.
On January 16, Ze'ev Schiff reported in Ha'aretz that some 80 activists of the Herut movement (the Likud's precursor) had toured southern Lebanon with a heavy escort of reserve officers and border policemen. The outing ended in Kiryat Shmona, where the visitors met with Sharon. The tour had included Tyre, Sidon and the Nabatiya Plateau. Some of the visitors tried to stop in order to buy souvenirs during the visit, but were urged by the IDF officers to keep moving.
"Why don't you ask about other songs?" Sharon erupted at Israel Television correspondent Dan Semama on a "Moked" interview program in early January, when Semama asked the defense minister what he thought about the ditty that was then a hit among IDF soldiers in Lebanon: "Come down to us little plane / Take us to Lebanon / We will fight for Sharon / And come home in a coffin."
The Kahan Commission made public its report on February 8, 1983. With regard to Sharon, the panel recommended that he "draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office" - in other words, that he resign; or, if necessary, that the prime minister "exercise his authority" to remove a minister from office.
However, despite the commission's recommendations and despite the enormous domestic and international pressure that was exerted on the government to adopt the commission's report, Sharon refused to resign. In the chapter of the report entitled "Personal Responsibility," the commission wrote, concerning defense minister Ariel Sharon: "If in fact the defense minister, when he decided that the Phalangists would enter the camps without the IDF taking part in the operation, did not think that that decision could bring about the very disaster that in fact occurred, the only possible explanation for this is that he disregarded any apprehensions about what was to be expected because the advantages ... to be gained from the Phalangists' entry into the camps distracted him from the proper consideration in this instance ... "From the defense minister himself we know that this consideration did not concern him in the least, and that this matter, with all its ramifications, was neither discussed nor examined in the meetings and discussions held by the defense minister. In our view, the minister of defense made a grave mistake when he ignored the danger of acts of revenge and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population in the refugee camps ...
"It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the minister of defense for having disregarded the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and having failed to take this danger into account when he decided to move the Phalangists into the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the minister of defense for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the non-fulfillment of a duty with which the defense minister was charged."
The dispute over whether Sharon could continue to serve as defense minister generated stormy demonstrations between his supporters and his detractors, which in some cases turned violent.
On February 10, 1983, a young man named Yona Avrushmi threw a grenade into a a crowd of Peace Now supporters who were dispersing after taking part in a procession through the streets of Jerusalem that ended across from the Prime Minister's Office building. One activist, Emil Grunzweig, was killed and 10 others were wounded, among them Avraham Burg, now the Knesset speaker. The cabinet, which was then in session across the way, voted to adopt the recommendations of the Kahan Commission by 16 to 1 - Sharon was the lone dissenter.
On February 14, the Knesset approved the prime minister's statement that Sharon had been relieved of his duties as defense minister. However, he remained in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio and, despite more public protest, was appointed a member of the ministerial defense committee and of a ministerial committee on negotiations with Lebanon.
"I do not leave here beaten, absolutely not," he told a farewell gathering of Defense Ministry staff.
Yitzhak Berman: "Did I think that after Sharon's removal he would one day be a candidate for prime minister? The answer is 'no.' I do not believe that Sharon has changed. But the majority of the country's citizens are not interested in history. History begins for them from the beginning of the first evening of Dudu Topaz's variety show. Whatever happened before that is of no relevance. I don't think people even remember the Lebanon War. It is relevant, definitely, it should be relevant, but people don't remember."
Said Uri Dan, journalist and adviser to Sharon, in an interview to David Shipler of The New York Times following Sharon's removal as defense minister: "When they didn't want to accept him as chief of staff, I said that those who did not want him as chief of staff would have to accept him as defense minister. Now I say that those who don't want to accept him as defense minister will have to accept him as prime minister."
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