Sharon builds settlements and a coalition

In 1973, Ariel Sharon, who had left the military for politics, returned briefly and won a decisive battle in Egypt during the Yom Kippur War. His prestige soared. Earlier that same year, he had proven to be an adept political deal-maker. He had successfully brought the right-wing Herut Party (headed by Menachem Begin) which had, some years earlier merged with the Liberal Party, together with disparate, smaller right-wing parties to form the Likud Coalition. For the first time, the entrenched Labor Party faced a serious political challenge. In fact, it would be only four years before Likud became the first party other than Labor to lead the Israeli government.

It was Sharon, more than any other figure, who was responsible for the creation of Likud. But although he won a seat in the Knesset in the delayed 1973 elections, he quit after only one year, not finding the work to his liking. He soon became a special aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and spent a few years trying to find his way back into a more key position in the Knesset. He finally formed his own party, which, after it won two seats in the Knesset, merged with the victorious Likud, whose leader, Menachem Begin, gave Sharon the position of Minister of Agriculture.

It was during this period that Sharon greatly increased his patronage of the settler movement. The first settlements had cropped up shortly after the 1967 war. But it was the rise of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) that really accelerated the settlement program. And one of the main reasons that Gush Emunim was so successful over the long term was because they had a very good friend inside the government in Ariel Sharon.

Sharon not only encouraged Jews to move to the settlements, but he also was the key figure in establishing the financial networks that brought funding from both the Israeli government and supporters all over the world to make the settlements a reality.

There was an irony here that would only become apparent later, although it was hinted at early on. As much as Gush Emunim owed their success to Sharon, he was never really one of them. Gush Emunim, and many other pro-settlement groups were motivated by a religious nationalism. This told them that they were acting not only for the good of the Jewish state, but were redeeming “Jewish land” that God had promised them in biblical times. For Gush Emunim, it was a direct affront to God and among the gravest of sins to give up even the tiniest piece of Eretz Yisrael once it had been “redeemed.” For Sharon, settlements were a means to an end, the end being securing an expanded state of Israel with as strong a Jewish majority as possible. He was motivated by purely nationalistic, rather than religious fervor. It did not matter to Sharon if some small piece of land had to be sacrificed for the greater good, as he saw it, of Israel. And so it would later come to pass that the “father of the settlements” would be reviled by the very settlers he had helped so much.