Sharon, Sinai and Lebanon

When Menachem Begin’s first coalition government began to crumble and he was faced with new elections, the aging and increasingly distracted Prime Minister turned to Sharon for help. In exchange, he promised Sharon the position of Minister of Defense. Once Begin scored his second victory, he made good on his promise to Sharon.

The hallmark of Begin’s first term had, ironically, been the Camp David Accords which brought a peace treaty with Egypt in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. Thus it was that Sharon, as Minister of Defense, was responsible for the evacuation of the settlements Israel had built in the Sinai. There were a number of settlements there, the largest being one called Yamit.  It was Sharon who handled this evacuation in 1982.

Much like Gaza in 2005, there was a great deal of internal hand-wringing, argument and fear of civil war, none of which materialized. In the end, the settlements were evacuated largely without incident. But Sharon put his stamp on the operation by destroying most of the settlements completely, including Yamit. This was in contravention of understandings in the Camp David agreement as well as being beyond the scope of what most of Israel’s political leaders wished him to do. Begin, however, was well pleased.

 

Sharon would later sue Time Magazine

At this point, Israeli attention turned to Lebanon. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was headquartered there, having been expelled over a decade earlier from Jordan. The country had been rife with civil war for years, exacerbated by outside powers, Israel and Syria. Sharon’s idea was to establish a friendly government in Lebanon headed by Israel’s Maronite allies. But most of the Israeli leadership was seeking only to expel the PLO from Lebanon. Though Sharon later disputed the claim, Cabinet minutes from the time clearly show that the Israeli army was only authorized to undertake operations for 40-42 kilometers inside of Lebanon. Sharon would press on much further, all the way to Beirut. Whether or not Begin knew of Sharon’s designs has been a subject of much debate and speculation ever since. Quite likely, Begin’s increasing confusion and detachment from reality allowed him to not know many things he was informed of at that point in his life.