The Sharon effect [View All]

Mostly hagiography, but a few bits I found interesting:

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First, the idea of a "greater Israel," which Sharon once championed, is dead, paradoxically by his own hand. And just as dead is the idea of a conflict-ending agreement with Palestinians on refugees, borders and Jerusalem, an idea Sharon has done his utmost to subvert. It is within these parameters that the next chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be written. And Sharon, with one eye on history and the other on his own mortality, plans to be its principal author.

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Nowhere has Sharon's pragmatism been better demonstrated than in Israel's disengagement from Gaza: 1.5 million Palestinians are no longer a demographic threat to the Jewish population of Israel; its army has been relieved of the corrosive effects of the Gaza occupation; its strategic ties with the United States are intact; and the onus for responsible behavior in Gaza has been shifted to the Palestinians. Moreover, for the first time in Israel's history, an Israeli prime minister succeeded in establishing a permanent western border for Israel, with the approval of the international community.

Should the prime minister be reelected in March (and only death or incapacitation is likely to prevent this), he will turn to setting a permanent border on the east as well — most likely unilaterally but possibly through negotiations with the Palestinians.

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But Sharon's public, buoyed by Gaza disengagement, is ready to be led by a tough, pragmatic and historic figure whom they trust. He will surely not end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but he believes he can produce an outcome that makes Israel more secure, with fewer Palestinians within its borders, and still leave the nation in control of key settlement blocks: the strategically important high ground along the ridge lines in the east and most of Jerusalem.

LA Times