Arik - The Life Of Ariel Sharon (57 page)

The meeting of the Palestinian parliament in Gaza proved an emotional and memorable event. The members, duly responding to Arafat’s request, approved almost unanimously his letter to Clinton abrogating the offensive provisions of the Palestinian National Covenant. Clinton’s sensitive and finely honed rhetoric moved everyone present and the millions who watched on television. The Palestinians, he declared, were “free to determine their own destiny on their own land.” He spoke of the Palestinian “history of dispossession and dispersal” and praised the parliament’s act of abrogation. His appearances in Israel, especially at a school in Jerusalem, elicited an outpouring of warmth from the public there, too. But the diplomacy remained paralyzed.

Once Clinton left the region, the collapse of the coalition quickened. Rumors swirled around Sharon again: Would he bid for the leadership? At a low-key and unhappy session of the Likud central committee on December 26, Sharon proclaimed categorically, “I don’t want to be prime minister … I object to these incessant attacks on the prime minister that haven’t let up from the day he took office … I myself always knew when to stop. I always stopped when the government was in danger of falling.” Two days later, Likud and Labor jointly announced a date for elections: May 17, 1999. The 140-day limbo period, plus the time it would take to form the new government after the election, was in line with the Israeli political tradition, where governments take a very long time between their death and their burial.

For Ariel Sharon, it was to be time well spent. Few people today, even inside Israeli politics, remember that he served as foreign minister; he left no lasting mark on this prestigious but often overrated portfolio. He hardly could, given that for his entire tenure he represented a government collapsing or collapsed. But it left its mark on him.

Eytan Bentsur, a long-serving professional diplomat whom Sharon kept on as director general of the ministry, was subsequently to develop deep reservations over Sharon’s policies
as prime minister and profound distaste for his ethical conduct and for the coterie of friends and advisers who surrounded him.
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Nevertheless, Bentsur was full of praise for Sharon’s performance at the Foreign Ministry. “He was a man you could talk to. He would encourage everyone to speak freely. There was no dogmatism about him. And he was really easy, pleasant actually, to work with. He didn’t throw his weight around.”

According to his chief of bureau,
Tomer Orni, Sharon took his appointment as foreign minister with great seriousness and embarked on a round of briefings and conversations with policy experts from across the spectrum, scribbling furiously in his little orange notebooks as though their analyses of the conflict and the region were all new to him. “He saw the Foreign Ministry as his preparation for the prime ministership—regardless of the slender political prospects, as he and everyone knew, that he would ever actually make it to prime minister.”

Despite the diplomatic chill, Sharon did manage to set up one
lengthy, unpublicized meeting with Abu Ala, the senior PA official who negotiated the
Oslo Accords. It took place at his ranch in late January 1999. Abu Ala drove down from Jerusalem incognito. Sharon had a log fire blazing in the hearth, Lily served cookies, and the atmosphere was relaxed and friendly. The host let the guest into a home truth. “For making war,” Sharon explained, “Israel needs a left-wing government. But for making peace, there has to be a nationalist government.” The election campaign was by no means over, he said, and the shape of the new government was unpredictable. Abu Ala said the PA had resolved to do nothing that could be perceived as intervening against the Likud. That was his message from Arafat. The
rais,
he said, respected Sharon as a man of his word.

What they should do, Sharon continued, was to forget the elections and get on with the peace process. Let’s take a specific issue, he suggested, and work on it. For instance, the “safe passage” route that was to link Gaza and the West Bank. Abu Ala said the Palestinians wanted that to be extraterritorial. Sharon said Israel would never agree. Abu Ala recounted his own humiliating experiences at Israeli army roadblocks. Sharon voiced anger at the soldiers’ behavior and sympathy for the Palestinians. He spoke of the danger of
terrorism triggering a cycle of violence that could engulf the region. Abu Ala said he, Abu Mazen, and Arafat himself were potential terror targets. The dialogue flowed back and forth with ease. Abu Ala contributed to the ambience by making no mention of Sharon’s call to the settlers to grab the hilltops.

S
haron had returned the night before from a trip to Russia, the first of three he was to make there during his short spell as foreign minister. The frequency of his flights to
Moscow raised eyebrows, especially in light of an ill-advised visit he had made to Russia as minister of infrastructures in June 1997 that had since mushroomed into the latest of his uncomfortable brushes with the law. That indiscretion (at best) involved his relations with one of the businessmen who accompanied him: Avigdor Ben-Gal, chairman of the government-owned
Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI), director of the government-owned Tahal water company, would-be entrepreneur, former army general, longtime critic of Sharon’s running of the
Lebanon War, and, by coincidence or not, a witness soon to give evidence for the defendant in Sharon’s
libel suit against
Haaretz
.
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Ben-Gal took part in meetings between Sharon and high Russian
officials where a projected pipeline project was discussed that would transport natural gas from Georgia to
Turkey and on, under the Mediterranean, to Israel. Ben-Gal made no secret of his desire to be involved in this lucrative venture. Sharon, despite their years of strained relations, introduced him as the IAI chairman and a military hero. A fortnight after they returned to Israel, Ben-Gal testified in the trial. He said that a lecture he had given ten years earlier, in which he accused Sharon of misleading Begin in the war, had been “nonsense and rubbish,” based on information he had since learned was completely groundless. Lawyers for
Haaretz
lodged a criminal complaint against him, alleging a gas-for-evidence bribery deal.

The attorney general ordered a
police inquiry. In the months that followed, Sharon, Ben-Gal, and many others spent long hours in police interrogation rooms. On April 30, 1999, almost two years after the events, and, as so often in Sharon’s
corruption cases, just days before the election, reports leaked out that the police were recommending that Sharon be indicted for bribery, perjury, suborning a witness, and a string of lesser charges. In the event—after the election—Attorney General
Elyakim Rubinstein and State Attorney
Edna Arbel decided to close the file for lack of evidence. “In a case based solely on circumstantial evidence,” Rubinstein wrote, “the test is whether the evidence leads to only one logical conclusion. This case, in our opinion, does not pass the test.”
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In the end, no pipeline was built, and Israel continued to buy its natural gas from Egypt and, later, from its own offshore fields. But Sharon’s drive to expand Israel’s relations with Russia was undaunted by this disappointment, or indeed by the waves of ugly speculation that now accompanied his sallies to Moscow. “Russia is a superpower,” he told Minister of Foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov on the January visit. “I have no doubt you will overcome your present difficulties and resume the global role which is properly yours.” He portrayed himself to his hosts as a proud and consistent Russophile with a fair knowledge of the language—he made a point of correcting the interpreters—and a love for the culture that he had absorbed from his mother.

Plainly, he had one eye on the large ex-Soviet immigrant constituency at home. He would make a point of beginning his diplomatic meetings, and especially those in Russia, with the declaration: “I am a Jew. First and foremost a Jew. That to me is the most important thing.”
“On his first visit to Moscow in January,” Orni recalled, “he began in this way with the president of the Duma, Gennadiy Seleznyov, and added: ‘I have come here to talk about the Jewish people.’ ” There had been some ugly instances of anti-Semitism in the parliament, and he waded in straightaway. “With the defense minister, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, he made the same ‘Jewish’ opening and went on to praise the Red Army’s role in ‘destroying the Nazi beast’ and spoke of the many Jews who fought with distinction in its ranks.” To Prime Minister
Yevgeny Primakov, Sharon asserted that the million Russian immigrants in Israel were “a bridge of friendship” between the two countries. He had called on the Jews in Russia to continue to immigrate to Israel, he said, and he hoped to see a million more. Primakov replied diplomatically that they necessarily differed on this matter, since Russia was a multicultural society and, from his perspective, there was no need for the Jews to leave. However, he added, the government would “not interfere with anyone who wants to go, though we won’t encourage it either.”

Bentsur, the director general, also emphasized Sharon’s “extraordinary sensitivity to the Jewish dimension” of Israeli policy making. “One time, for instance, I was asked to fly to
Vienna to meet representatives of the Hungarian Jewish community. They seriously feared an explosion of fascistic anti-Semitism in their country. I remember Sharon phoned me in Vienna to ask for details. I felt his concern was totally sincere. He would expound on the themes of Jewish suffering and Jewish rights in every diplomatic conversation. He saw Israel, and indeed he saw himself, as the guardian of Jewish interests worldwide.”
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While
Iran, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and anti-Semitism were the issues that took up most of the talks, it was Sharon’s maverick stance on the
Balkan conflict that attracted most attention, both at home and in Washington. Sharon stood out in his unconcealed preference for the Serbs, who were backed by their traditional ally—Russia. Urged by his professional staff at the Foreign Ministry to join his voice to worldwide condemnation of the Serbs, he agreed only to a general and vaguely worded condemnation of all aggression against innocent persons. “Today bad things are being done to the Albanians; not long ago bad things were done to the Serbs.”

Sharon’s reasoning was complex. First, there was the memory, still very much alive among some Israelis, of the Serbian people’s support for persecuted Jews during the Nazi
Holocaust, a distinct rarity among the nations of Europe. Then there was his basic belief that
Israel needed to improve its relations with Russia. Beyond that, Sharon urged Israeli policy makers to look to the future: if armed intervention by outside powers to enforce a solution to a regional conflict was legitimate in one part of the world, it would be legitimate in other parts of the world. Israel could become a future victim of such legitimacy.

Netanyahu tried to stand behind Washington while at the same time not falling out with Sharon on the eve of the election. His office formally announced that Israel supported the NATO
bombing. Sharon still tried to have it both ways. “As loyal friends of the U.S.,” a Foreign Ministry statement said, “we expect U.S. and NATO forces to do everything to end the sufferings of innocent people and bring about a resumption of negotiations between the parties as soon as possible.” But the Americans were in no mood to appreciate minor ameliorations in what they saw as Sharon’s treacherous position. Secretary Albright made him sweat when he visited Washington in March 1999. “It makes me wonder,” she observed sarcastically, “that Israel is not fully supportive of the
United States in Kosovo. To tell you the truth, I’m shocked.”

Unbowed by this drubbing, Sharon flew on to Moscow, where he basked in the glow of his self-arrogated status of global fixer. He assured Prime Minister Primakov that he had spoken in Washington on Russia’s behalf to Stanley Fischer at the
International Monetary Fund and to James Wolfensohn at the
World Bank, and he hoped a loan would be forthcoming. As for Mrs. Albright, “you will be happy to know that she really likes you. It made me almost jealous.”

Primakov praised Sharon for his position on Kosovo, “which is not like that of Netanyahu.” Sharon, at his most statesmanlike, suggested that the Americans wanted Russia’s help in reaching a solution in Kosovo. “They’re pushing us into a corner,” Primakov replied grumpily. Sharon said Russia could improve its international image and standing if it would only speak out publicly against the atrocities. “Women are raped there daily, and you don’t say anything. It’s not my business. I’m just telling you my impression.”

Plainly, Sharon enjoyed his time as foreign minister. He was cold-shouldered by some world statesmen; Britain’s foreign secretary, Robin Cook, was one notable example. But others were cordial enough, and with one in particular, Germany’s foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, Sharon built a warm relationship. His enjoyment was clouded, however, by the start of Lily’s battle with cancer. She was diagnosed in February 1999. Sharon devotedly accompanied her to examinations and treatment in Israel and the United States.

•   •   •

S
haron’s last trip to Moscow as foreign minister was originally scheduled to coincide with a visit to the Russian capital by
Hafez Assad, the president of Syria. As it happened, Assad canceled due to ill health. Sharon urged his Russian hosts to work urgently in order to bring Israel and Syria to the negotiating table—at least according to
Ze’ev Schiff, the respected defense analyst. Writing in
Haaretz
during Sharon’s visit, Schiff asserted that the foreign minister was proposing to the Russians an immediate mediation that would lead to Israel’s withdrawal from the
Golan Heights in two stages in return for a full peace treaty with long-term security arrangements on the Heights.
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Sharon flatly denied Schiff’s report. The story, he insisted, was a complete fabrication.

Schiff, who died in 2007, was not one to fabricate stories. Soon after the 1999 election, he exposed in
Haaretz
in elaborate detail a long and intricate pattern of secret talks that Netanyahu had conducted with Syria, through middlemen, almost throughout his term. An EU envoy, an Omani minister, and the American Jewish businessman and public figure
Ronald Lauder had all shuttled assiduously between Netanyahu and Assad in separate back-channel efforts to broker a deal.
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