Former Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Dead at 85

The former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, is dead at the age of 85. He died on Saturday at Sheba Medical Center in the Tel Aviv suburb of Tel Hashomer after eight years in a coma.

Sharon was a commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948. As a paratrooper and then an officer, he participated prominently in the 1948 War of Independence, becoming a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade and taking part in many battles, including Operation Ben Nun Alef. He was an instrumental figure in the creation of Unit 101, and the Retribution operations, as well as in the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition, and the Yom-Kippur War of 1973. As Minister of Defense, he directed the 1982 Lebanon War.

During his military career, he was considered the greatest field commander in Israel’s history, and one of the country’s greatest ever military strategists.[2] After his assault of the Sinai in the Six-Day War and his encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army in the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli public nicknamed him “The King of Israel” and “The Lion of God”.

After retiring from the army, Sharon joined the Likud party, and served in a number of ministerial posts in Likud-led governments in 1977–92 and 1996–99. He became the leader of the Likud in 2000, and served as Israel’s Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006. In 1983 the Kahan Commission, established by the Israeli Government, found that as Minister of Defense during the 1982 Lebanon War Sharon bore “personal responsibility” for the massacre by Lebanese militias of Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, for his having disregarded the prospect of acts of bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and not having prevented their entry.

The Kahan Commission recommended Sharon’s removal as Defense Minister, and Sharon did resign after initially refusing to do so. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Sharon championed construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, as Prime Minister, in 2004–05 Sharon orchestrated Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Facing stiff opposition to this policy within the Likud, in November 2005 he left Likud to form a new Kadima party. He had been expected to win the next election and was widely interpreted as planning on “clearing Israel out of most of the West Bank”, in a series of unilateral withdrawals.

However, Sharon suffered a stroke on 4 January 2006 and was left in a permanent vegetative state until his death eight years later.