In the early 90s, Ariel Sharon watched Benjamin Netanyahu complete his meteoric rise to the top of the Likud Party. At the time, Netanyahu’s appeal was, in part, his American education, his ability to speak English without an accent and his inclination toward American-style politics. He was seen as a hardliner, but one who was more diplomatic than Sharon, who generally attacked him from the right. After Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, an embarrassing military operation in Lebanon (which included the killing of over 100 innocent civilians at Qana, an act which Israel claimed was an accident, but which a UN investigation deemed otherwise) and a string of suicide bombings intended to derail the ongoing Oslo process, Netanyahu won the 1996 election for Prime Minister. He brought Sharon back into government as National Infrastructure Minister. In that role, Netanyahu hoped, Sharon could busy himself expanding settlements but would not be in too powerful a position in the government.

In 1997, with the United States exerting great pressure on Netanyahu to complete a scheduled pull back from parts of the West Bank and the Labor Party leaving the unity government, Netanyahu changed course and gave Sharon the post of Foreign Minister. He no doubt hoped that this appointment would accomplish several things: one, keep Sharon from attacking him from the right by, in essence, buying him off; two, mollify the extreme right, angered at Netanyahu’s pullback on the West Bank, by putting the “Father of the Settlements” in a position of greater power; and three, keep enough of the right in the government to keep it from falling in the wake of Labor’s departure. The Netanyahu government would survive for a while longer, but Sharon never relented in hurling barbs at “Bibi.”

Sharon walks past Benjamin Netanyahu

When Netanyahu lost the 1999 elections, amid scandal and general disenchantment with him, he also stepped down as the leader of the Likud Coalition. Sharon was elected to take his place. While Likud had lost the election, the Labor Party (now part of a coalition called One Israel) had only won 26 seats in the election. New Prime Minister Ehud Barak was on thin ice, and in fact, his government was frequently teetering on the brink of collapse and would last just over one and a half years. Suddenly it was not only possible that Sharon could win the Prime Ministership, it seemed likely.

Barak finally ended the Lebanon mess Sharon had created. But it would matter very little if he could not make significant progress on the Palestinian track. Moreover, Barak’s government was dependent on the presence of the ultra-orthodox Shas party, which was making demands on him he was not willing to meet. These factors combined with the lame-duck status of American President Bill Clinton to convince the two leaders to press Yasir Arafat into final status talks at Camp David.

Ehud Barak (left) and Sharon

Sharon led the pressure on Barak. Renewing his call for Jews to settle in the West Bank before Barak “gave it all away”, he was also the key voice in raising Israeli anxieties about the nature of the compromises Barak was prepared to make. Israelis were hearing that all of East Jerusalem would be given up, something that did not have popular support and which pushed the nationalist buttons of many Israelis.

Sharon could also sit and watch as the position of his nemesis, Yasir Arafat, eroded. It was said by numerous Israeli commentators that Sharon had a deep personal hatred for Arafat and that he was driven in his later years by a feeling that he should have found a way to kill Arafat in Lebanon during Israel’s invasion. Whatever the truth of that matter, there is no doubt that Sharon dedicated himself, both as leader of the opposition and as Prime Minister, to eradicating the image of Arafat as a potential partner for peace and casting him instead in the role of a Hitler or bin Laden. And in terms of public perception, certainly in much of the United States, he undoubtedly succeeded in this.

When the talks at Camp David collapsed, Sharon could see the Barak government about to fall. Barak saw his coalition splintering and he knew that only some kind of deal with the Palestinians could save his administration. But in the weeks after the collapse of the talks, Barak and Clinton spent most of their energy blaming Arafat for the failure (something they had promised not to do before the summit). Sharon, smelling blood in the water, decided to act to raise the temperature of the situation. He knew that if tensions erupted into violence, Barak would be viewed a failure. Barak’s only hope was some agreement before new elections could be called, and significant clashes between Israelis and Palestinians would make that very difficult, if not impossible.

On September 28, 2000, against the wishes of much of the Israeli government, Ariel Sharon brought a huge contingent of soldiers and policemen with him to visit the Temple Mount. This site, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Har Habayit, is the single hottest flashpoint in the Israel-Palestine conflict. A holy site to both Jews and Muslims, it is the very symbol of both religious and nationalist identity for both sides.

Ariel Sharon at the Temple Mount, 9/28/00

The timing of the visit was carefully planned. It was not a coincidence that Sharon scheduled this visit for a Thursday. He knew that the enormous military presence would forestall a violent eruption at the time of the visit. But Sharon was also well aware that Friday prayers at the Haram al-Sharif often were followed by protests. He openly declared that his visit was meant to demonstrate Israeli control over Jerusalem, as Israel’s eternal and undivided capital. But the real target of Sharon’s visit was Barak. The Prime Minister had urged Sharon not to visit the Mount, but had stopped short of actually forbidding him to do so. This demonstrated Barak’s weakness. Sharon’s message was a response to the aspects of the Camp David talks where Barak had made some compromises on Jerusalem, and was meant to demonstrate that he would do no such thing.

The following day, after Friday prayers, some of the worshippers threw stones at Jewish worshippers at the nearby Wailing Wall, the holiest site in the world for Jews. Israeli soldiers responded with live ammunition, killing four Palestinians. Riots erupted throughout the Occupied Territories and a Palestinian policeman, on joint patrol with an Israeli, shot and killed his counterpart. Thus began the second intifada.

The Barak government was dead. The negotiations, which continued and culminated at Taba in January, 2001, held little weight with the Israeli public and Sharon publicly announced that he would not recognize any agreements reached in the Taba talks. In that same month, Sharon decisively defeated Barak in national elections. He had finally attained the role he had sought for so very long. Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister of Israel.