Ariel Sharon

Please consult the book's 2nd edition, above

Three prints of the 1st edition were sold between April 15, 2014 - July 31, 2015. The book went out of print and its adventures in publish-land are discussed here:
https://www.academia.edu/41932472/Jadaliyya_-_New_Text_Out_Now_Author_Interview_with_Smadar_Lavie_on_Wrapped_in_the_Flag_of_Israels_Revised_Edition_with_the_New_Afterword._January_20_2020

Drawing on Marx's analysis of the rise to power of Louis Bonaparte, in this (Hebrew) article I analyze Ariel Sharon's rise to power in 2001 and the policies pursued by his government until his incapacitation in 2005. Sharon was elected Prime Minister due to a deadlock in the struggle between the Jewish bourgeoisie and the Jewish working class: the former succeeded in pushing through profound neo-liberal reforms, which seriously harmed the economic interests of the latter, while the latter were able to stymie the former's pet political project – the Oslo peace process. Sharon kept, and enhanced, this duality, waging renewed war on the Palestinians and shattering the Israeli welfare state, thus ensuring the support of both social classes. At the end of 2003 he made another turn – announcing his intention to withdraw from Gaza, he succeeded in (mis)branding himself a man of peace, consolidating the support of the Jewish bourgeoisie and gaining popularity among the Western political class.

Unpublished review (1989).

"Rather than intelligible history, what emerges from this book are questions about how a violently aggressive and dishonest personality like Sharon has emerged, retreated in disgrace, and re-emerged in Israel’s political and military leadership."

Abstrakt Artykuł omawia działania 38. Ugdy Cahalu dowodzonej przez gen. bryg. Arie-la Szarona podczas wojny sześciodniowej. Opisuje przebieg działań tego związ-ku taktycznego oraz rolę jego dowódcy w osiągnięciu zwycięstwa nad egipską 12. BP i 6. DZmech. Bitwa, która rozegrała się na Synaju w dniach 5-8 czerwca 1967 roku, jest cały czas jednym z wyróżniających się przykładów prowadzenia mobilnych operacji zaczepnych. W przypadku 38. Ugdy dochodzi jeszcze aspekt planowania i przeprowadzenia działań połączonych, w których wojska pancerne, powietrznodesantowe, artyleria i piechota osiągnęły wysoki stopień synergii. Zaowocowało to szybkim zwycięstwem i niskimi stratami własnymi Izraelczyków.

Abstract. This article addresses operations of the 38th Ugdah commanded by Brig. Gen. Ariel Sharon during Six-Day War. It describes the course of events and role of the division commander in defeating the Egyptian 12th Infantry Brigade as well as part of the 6th Mechanized Division. The battle that took place on the Sinai from 5th to 8th June 1967 is still one of the great examples of mobile armored operations. In the case of the 38th Ugdah there is one more dimension that needs to be explained i.e. planning and executing of combined operation that included tanks, paratroops, artillery, and infantry which succeeded in reaching high level of synergy. This resulted in quick victory with minimal losses for Israelis.

The path for the Likud's establishment in the fall of 1973 was a weighty reference point for right-wing emergence in the State of Israel. The initiative to expand Gahal originated from different sources from within the Israeli political establishment, of both Liberal party and Herut's internal opposition party lines. Menachem Begin however was reserved from 1966-1973 to establish a broad right-of-center party. The paper showcases the various initiatives and examines the reasons behind Begin's indifferent response to them and illustrates the course that Ariel Sharon took in order to expand Gahal, with full awareness of the objection that Begin and his party had and the strenuous negotiations that eventually and laboriously gave rise to the Likud.
The establishment of the Likud party is portrayed on the one hand as an attempt to build on the possibility of a regime change in Israel while on the other hand narrow down the Menachem Begin's and the Herut movement's impact on the joint-ticket party. The paper lays out the internal processes from within the Herut movement that kept its dominance on the Likud, in contrast with the intentions of its partners. Turning  Herut into a thriving politically-engaging platform made it a dominant force in the newly-created party and played a significant contributory role in drawing up similar definitions for the "Likud" and the "Herut movement" for the next years to come.
המאמר מנתח את הדרך להקמת הליכוד בסתיו 1973 כנקודת ציון משמעותית בתהליך צבירת הכוח של הימין במדינת ישראל. היוזמה להרחיב את גח"ל הגיעה מגורמים שונים במערכת הפוליטית בישראל, משורות המפלגה הליברלית ומהאופוזיציה הפנימית בתנועת החרות. דווקא מנחם בגין הוא שהסתייג לאורך השנים 1966-1973 מהקמת מפלגת מרכז-ימין רחבה. המאמר מציג את היוזמות השונות ומנתח את הסיבות לתגובה האדישה של בגין להן. מוצגת הדרך בה אריאל שרון בחר לקדם את הרחבת גח"ל, מתוך מודעות להתנגדות של בגין ושל תנועתו ואת המשא ומתן הקשה, רצוף המשברים, שבסופו, בקושי רב, הוקם הליכוד.
הקמת הליכוד מוצגת במאמר כניסיון מצד אחד לחזק את האפשרות של חילופי שלטון בישראל ומצד שני לצמצם את השפעתם של מנחם בגין ותנועת החרות על המפלגה המשותפת. נפרסים התהליכים הפנימיים בתוך תנועת החרות שהביאו לכך שהיא הצליחה לשמור על מעמדה הדומיננטי ב'ליכוד', בניגוד לכוונת השותפות שלה. הפיכת 'חרות' לזירת מעורבות ופעילות פוליטית תוססת היא שהפכו אותה לגורם הדומיננטי במפלגה החדשה ותרמו ליצירת מידה רבה של זהות בין 'חרות' לבין המושג 'ליכוד' בשנים הבאות.

מלחמת שלום הגליל היא אחת המלחמות השנויות במחלוקת בחברה הישראלית. הנרטיב הרווח קובע ששר הביטחון אריאל שרון הונה את ראש הממשלה מנחם בגין ואת הממשלה כולה. מנחם בגין והממשלה אישרו פעולה מצומצמת שנועדה להרחיק את הארגונים הפלסטיניים כארבעים קילומטר מן הגבול, אך לשר הביטחון היו תכניות אחרות אשר נועדו להנהיג סדר חדש בארץ הארזים. בלי לנסות ולהצדיק את מעשיו של שרון או לזַכּוֹת אותו על מהלכיו במלחמה, נרטיב זה עושה עוול לראש הממשלה דאז מנחם בגין. הוא מעניק משקל רב לשרון ודוחק את בגין אל קרן זווית כשחקן שולי. אך לבגין היה תפקיד גדול ומשמעותי יותר. במאמר זה אני מבקש לטעון כי מבחינת המדיניות הלבנונית של מנחם בגין, מלחמת שלום הגליל הייתה ידועה מראש. הטענה המרכזית במאמר זה היא שמרגע שמנחם בגין עלה לשלטון ב=1977 החלה מעין ספירה לאחור לפעולה נרחבת ומקיפה בלבנון. תחת מנהיגותו של בגין התערבה ישראל בנעשה בלבנון יותר ויותר, מדרום המדינה ועד מרכזה. המעשים, ההחלטות וההצהרות של בגין וממשלותיו בשנים שקדמו למלחמת שלום הגליל סללו את הדרך למלחמה.
The Peace for Galilee War which began in 1982 is one of the most controversial events in Israeli history. The prevailing narrative states that it was a war of deception, in which Defense Minister Ariel Sharon misled Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the rest of the government. While Begin and the government approved a small-scale operation that was meant to push the Palestinian organizations to 40 kilometers north of the Israeli border, Sharon had more grandiose plans aimed at creating a new order in Lebanon. Without trying to vindicate Sharon for his actions during the war, this narrative attributes Begin with far too small a role.
This article claims that as part of Begin’s Lebanese policy, the Peace for Galilee War was conceptualized well in advance. It will show that from the moment Begin became prime minister in 1977, a countdown began toward a full-scale operation in Lebanon. Under Begin’s leadership, Israel’s involvement in Lebanon increased from year to year. The culmination was the Peace for Galilee War.

This article seeks to add another dimension to the growing and extensive research on right-wing Zionism, by returning to an era when the Likud was first created. I will examine the major difference between processes that have led to the two key landmarks in the formative years of the Right in Israel: the establishment of Gahal in April 1965 and the founding of the Likud in August–September of 1973. While Gahal's establishment was a product of a prolonged, determined, patient and conscious effort on the part of Menachem Begin, the establishment of the Likud was, to a considerable degree, forced upon him. Those who were interested in expanding Gahal and creating an alignment of centre-right parties were actually the factors outside Herut, while Herut's more veteran leadership disapproved of these attempts. Within the Herut Movement, the voices that called for the creation of a broad political alignment were those that came from Herut's ‘internal opposition’, which revolved around Ezer Weizman. The article analyses the reasons behind Begin's reservations about a continued right-wing merger, examines the negotiation process and sheds light on the oscillation in Menachem Begin's ideology and politics between the fundamental and the pragmatic poles.

Drawing on Marx's analysis of the rise to power of Louis Bonaparte, in this (Hebrew) article I analyze Ariel Sharon's rise to power in 2001 and the policies pursued by his government until his incapacitation in 2005. Sharon was elected Prime Minister due to a deadlock in the struggle between the Jewish bourgeoisie and the Jewish working class: the former succeeded in pushing through profound neo-liberal reforms, which seriously harmed the economic interests of the latter, while the latter were able to stymie the former's pet political project – the Oslo peace process. Sharon kept, and enhanced, this duality, waging renewed war on the Palestinians and shattering the Israeli welfare state, thus ensuring the support of both social classes. At the end of 2003 he made another turn – announcing his intention to withdraw from Gaza, he succeeded in (mis)branding himself a man of peace, consolidating the support of the Jewish bourgeoisie and gaining popularity among the Western political class.

The Israeli settlement movement began after Israel's decisive victory in the 1967 Six-Day War in which Israel gained control of the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Despite the fact that the Geneva Convention of 1949 says that it was a war crime for a victorious power to move its civilian population into an occupied territory, the Israel government insisted that the West Bank and Gaza were not occupied territories, but originally part of the Palestine mandate and the armistice line of 1949 was no longer in effect. Nevertheless, the United Nations in 1947 passed Resolution 242 demanding that Israel withdraw from “territories conquered in the recent conflict.”

The founding of Hamas in 1987 was the direct result of the so-called First Intifada, which were Palestinian protests against the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip. Unlike the secular Fatah led by Yasser Arafat, Hamas had its roots with the radical Islamist group known as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It was committed to armed conflict against the Jewish state of Israel and the recapture of all of Palestine. Hamas sought to undermine the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Arafat that was to lead to a two-state solution.

The conservative Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who became prime minister of Israel in 1996 after the assassination of Rabin, also sought to undo Oslo Accord. His fellow Likud Party member, Ariel Sharon, precipitated the Second Intifada in 2000, when he made a provocative visit to the Temple Mount, sacred to both Jews and Muslims. In this uprising Hamas and other Islamic Palestinian groups resorted to the “terrorist” tactic of suicide bombings. The attack on New York’s World Trade Center in September 2001 resulted in President George W. Bush declaring a War on Terrorism, a concept that owed it modern usage to Benjamin Netanyahu’s conferences held in Washington during the Reagan administration. When Ariel Sharon became prime minister of Israel in 2003, realizing that the settlement movement would result eventually in an Arab majority in Israel, he decided to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. But when Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, and began to launch rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, now in a second term as prime minister of Israel, decided to expand settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Today Israel continues to show little interest in changing the status quo. The more extreme elements of the “settlers” want to restore the Jordan River as the eastern boundary of Israel, and some even to claim the entire Palestine mandate including Jordan. Netanyahu has repeatedly obstructed negotiations, now demanding as pre-conditions that any a future Palestinian state be demilitarized, that Israeli troops be stationed on the Jordan River (separating the West Bank from Jordan), that Jerusalem be the undivided capital of Israel, and that the Palestinians recognize Israel as “the Jewish state.” The current administration in Washington has allowed the Jewish lobby to block economic sanctions that would force Israel to bargain in good faith for a viable, two-state solution. The concept of a War on Terrorism, which was developed in its modern application by Netanyahu (whose parents were supporters of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Jewish terrorist group known as the Irgun during the British Mandate), is still the basis of American foreign policy. Netanyahu has managed to shift the focus from the Israeli settlements to Iran’s development of nuclear power, masking the fact the United States had turned a blind eye to Israel’s secret development in the 1950s of a nuclear bomb. If anything, after 9/11 the United States’ unconditional support of Israel is more of a threat to our national security than the assymetrical warfare tactics being used by Islamic groups in such diverse conflicts as Chechnya, western China, Syria, Sudan, and Iraq. Eventually, the long-term solution is a single, secular state that is a homeland to both Jews and Palestinians. In the meantime, the United States needs to apply pressure to Israel to agree to a temporarily partition and the internationalization of Jerusalem as originally suggested by the United Nations in 1947.

The 1967 Six-Day War was a turning point for the Middle East. No longer fighting for its survival, Israel became an occupying power on the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula to the banks of the Suez Canal. Egyptian policy under Gamal Abdel Nasser was the retake the conquered territory in the Sinai by initiating a War of Attrition of raids against Israeli forces. Israel responded with escalating force with air raids deep into Egypt. The United Nations passed Resolution 242 calling for Israel to withdraw from the conquered territories and sent a peace mission under the Swedish diplomat Gunnar Janning. But Nasser responded with the so-called three-no’s at the Khartoum conference calling for no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel, and no peace. Israel on its side was unwilling for withdraw from the conquered territories as a condition for negotiations.

After the sudden death of Nasser from a heart attack in September 1970, Anwar Sadat became the president of Egypt. Sadat at first followed the same policy as Nasser’s, that is, attempting to restore Egypt’s prestige by trying to reverse militarily the outcome of the 1967 War. He approached the Soviet Union for military aid, which resulted in the United States reluctantly promising arms to Israel to maintain a balance of power. President Richard Nixon’s advisor for National Security, Henry Kissinger, made no attempt to disguise the fact that the primary interest of the United States in the Middle East was to check the influence of the Soviet Union in the region. This was consistent with the general assumption of American foreign policy during the Cold War that the spread of Communism was of primary importance. This thinking resulted repeatedly in the United States allowing anti-Communist ideology to mask the underlying cause of self-determination that the United States championed up until World War Two.

But when at a Summit Conference in Moscow the Soviet Union agreed  with the United States that the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) was more important than resolving the Middle East problem, Sadat demanded that the Soviet advisors depart from Egypt. In October 1973 Sadat launched a surprise attack on Israeli forces in the Sinai on the Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur in conjunction with a Syrian attack in the Galilee. The so-called Yom Kippur War backfired on Sadat: Israeli forces counterattacked and crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt. The failure of this military action convinced Sadat to negotiate a separate peace. At first Israel was unwilling to withdraw from its conquered territory in the Sinai despite the United Nations Resolution 242. When Jimmy Carter became President, he made it a priority to mediate an agreement between Egypt and Israel. The irony is that it was Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who himself was a former terrorist as leader of the Irgun, who signed the Camp David Accords in March 1979. This is of note in light of the fact that Israel later refused to negotiate with the Palestinian leader, Yassir Arafat, on the grounds that he had been a terrorist. Nevertheless, the Camp David Accord established the precedent of land for peace: in exchange for peace, Egypt was able to regain the Sinai Peninsula. There are those that say Sadat lost the war, but achieved what he wanted, that is, the Sinai. However, he became viewed as a traitor to the Arab cause, and for this he was assassinated by radical Islamists in October 1981. Today, the issue of the occupied territories (the Golan Heights, the West Bank and East Jerusalem) remains unresolved, and rather than anti-Communism, it is the War on Terrorism that blinds the United States to the underlying issue of self-determination.


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This article seeks to add another dimension to the growing and extensive research on right-wing Zionism, by returning to an era when the Likud was first created. I will examine the major difference between processes that have led to the two key landmarks in the formative years of the Right in Israel: the establishment of Gahal in April 1965 and the founding of the Likud in August–September of 1973. While Gahal's establishment was a product of a prolonged, determined, patient and conscious effort on the part of Menachem Begin, the establishment of the Likud was, to a considerable degree, forced upon him. Those who were interested in expanding Gahal and creating an alignment of centre-right parties were actually the factors outside Herut, while Herut's more veteran leadership disapproved of these attempts. Within the Herut Movement, the voices that called for the creation of a broad political alignment were those that came from Herut's ‘internal opposition’, which revolved around Ezer Weizman. The article analyses the reasons behind Begin's reservations about a continued right-wing merger, examines the negotiation process and sheds light on the oscillation in Menachem Begin's ideology and politics between the fundamental and the pragmatic poles.

... that its position is contrary to the position of the 'great majority of other participants in the ... the DoP Israel remained in a position allowing her to exercise effective, even if not direct or full ... Israel and the PLO and the resulting transfer of powers and responsibilities on the status of the ...

המאמר מנתח את הדרך להקמת הליכוד בסתיו 1973 כנקודת ציון משמעותית בתהליך צבירת הכוח של הימין במדינת ישראל. היוזמה להרחיב את גח"ל הגיעה מגורמים שונים במערכת הפוליטית בישראל, משורות המפלגה הליברלית ומהאופוזיציה הפנימית בתנועת החרות. דווקא מנחם בגין הוא שהסתייג לאורך השנים 1966-1973 מהקמת מפלגת מרכז-ימין רחבה. המאמר מציג את היוזמות השונות ומנתח את הסיבות לתגובה האדישה של בגין להן. מוצגת הדרך בה אריאל שרון בחר לקדם את הרחבת גח"ל, מתוך מודעות להתנגדות של בגין ושל תנועתו ואת המשא ומתן הקשה, רצוף המשברים, שבסופו, בקושי רב, הוקם הליכוד.
הקמת הליכוד מוצגת במאמר כניסיון מצד אחד לחזק את האפשרות של חילופי שלטון בישראל ומצד שני לצמצם את השפעתם של מנחם בגין ותנועת החרות על המפלגה המשותפת. נפרסים התהליכים הפנימיים בתוך תנועת החרות שהביאו לכך שהיא הצליחה לשמור על מעמדה הדומיננטי ב'ליכוד', בניגוד לכוונת השותפות שלה. הפיכת 'חרות' לזירת מעורבות ופעילות פוליטית תוססת היא שהפכו אותה לגורם הדומיננטי במפלגה החדשה ותרמו ליצירת מידה רבה של זהות בין 'חרות' לבין המושג 'ליכוד' בשנים הבאות.
The path for the Likud's establishment in the fall of 1973 was a weighty reference point for right-wing emergence in the State of Israel. The initiative to expand Gahal originated from different sources from within the Israeli political establishment, of both Liberal party and Herut's internal opposition party lines. Menachem Begin however was reserved from 1966-1973 to establish a broad right-of-center party. The paper showcases the various initiatives and examines the reasons behind Begin's indifferent response to them and illustrates the course that Ariel Sharon took in order to expand Gahal, with full awareness of the objection that Begin and his party had and the strenuous negotiations that eventually and laboriously gave rise to the Likud.
The establishment of the Likud party is portrayed on the one hand as an attempt to build on the possibility of a regime change in Israel while on the other hand narrow down the Menachem Begin's and the Herut movement's impact on the joint-ticket party. The paper lays out the internal processes from within the Herut movement that kept its dominance on the Likud, in contrast with the intentions of its partners. Turning  Herut into a thriving politically-engaging platform made it a dominant force in the newly-created party and played a significant contributory role in drawing up similar definitions for the "Likud" and the "Herut movement" for the next years to come.