Sharon had not only attained his goal of becoming Prime Minister but he had attained it at what, for him, was undoubtedly the ideal moment in history. For the first time since the 1948 war, Israel was locked in a bloody conflict directly with the Palestinians. Even better for Sharon, there was a widespread, though inaccurate, perception that the second intifada was carefully orchestrated by the Palestinians, beginning with the failure of Camp David. Sharon recognized that his hated nemesis Arafat had been demonized in the popular perceptions of the only two countries whose views he cared about: Israel and the United States. Even under Barak, the Israeli response to the initial violence by Palestinians was massive and disproportionate, clearly aimed at devastation rather than controlling the uprising. According to a report published on September 6, 2002 in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, the Israeli army’s records show that one million live rounds of ammunition were fired during only the first three weeks of the intifada. In the first month, 141 Palestinians were killed; the overwhelming majority of them unarmed civilians. 12 Israelis were killed, most of them soldiers or settlers. 13 Arab citizens of Israel were also killed when police responded to their tire-burning demonstration with live rounds.

Into this fray, Sharon came. He immediately set out the parameters under which he would operate: he would not negotiate with the Palestinians unless they stopped the violence. While this won favor in the eyes of many Israelis and with the new American administration of George W. Bush, most analysts recognized the flaw inherent in this declaration. One negotiates a cessation of hostilities, because the other side, if it agrees to the terms outlined by Sharon, will be viewed as surrendering. Sharon well knew that Arafat had lost a great deal of prestige in the eyes of most Palestinians. Not only because of Camp David, but also through years of corruption and human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority (PA) under his rule. This was coupled with Arafat’s failure to secure any concessions from Israel that substantially improved the lives of most Palestinians. In fact, the second intifada was directed just as much against the PA as against the Israeli occupation. Arafat simply could not consider negotiating under Sharon’s terms. In any event, he did not have the ability to stop the violence, as Sharon was well aware.

With the Bush Administration initially adopting a hands-off policy to the Israel-Palestine conflict (in an attempt to depart from the intense engagement of the Clinton Administration), Sharon was free to deal with the Palestinian uprising with an iron hand. He tightened the grip of the occupation, setting up many more checkpoints and re-mobilizing the Israeli army in many locations in the West Bank. Sharon also began assassinating key members of Palestinian militant groups. These he carried out consistently, but also at times when he thought the intifada might be dying down. According to Alex Fishman, the military analyst for the right-of-center Israeli daily, Yediot Aharonot, a November 23 assassination was carried out in order to nullify a secret agreement Arafat had managed to reach with Hamas wherein the militant group would refrain from carrying out attacks inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel. Sharon had seen an opportunity to reverse not only the Oslo Accords but many of the gains Palestinians had won in the first intifada in terms of world sympathy. He would not wish to see anything less than an Israeli military victory.

Meanwhile, the Israeli economy was severely impacted by the second intifada, although it remained functional, unlike the Palestinians’. The already-militarized nature of Israeli society was becoming much more so. Many more Israelis were living in poverty and the position of the Arab minority in Israel was becoming much more tenuous. About these matters, it seemed, Sharon cared very little, or, at the least, felt that his attention needed to be elsewhere.