Arik - The Life Of Ariel Sharon (38 page)

As for
David Levy’s warning at cabinet,

The commission rejected Begin’s claim that he was “absolutely unaware” of the danger inherent in sending the Phalangists in. After
all, Begin himself had explained that the decision to send the
IDF into West Beirut was “in order to protect the Moslems from the vengeance of the Phalangists.”

In effect—an acquittal, albeit Begin said when he first read the report that he felt he ought to resign. But he was quickly talked out of that idea by Minister of Justice Nissim and the cabinet secretary,
Dan Meridor. The two of them focused Begin on the real political hot potato that emerged unequivocally from the report: the need to fire Sharon.
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Sharon’s guilt was that he should have known.

Sharon claimed, like Begin, that no one had imagined that the Phalangists would perpetrate a massacre. And, as with Begin, the commission dismissed that contention as implausible, even specious. Sharon could not claim, as Begin had, that he did not know the Phalangists were being sent into the camps, because it was he and Eitan who decided to send them.

The commission reached essentially the same conclusions regarding
Chief of Staff Eitan. In addition, unlike Sharon, it found him guilty of failing to put a stop to the killings as soon as he became aware of them. The commission made it plain that it would have recommended Eitan’s dismissal had he not been at the end of his term as chief of staff anyway. It recommended that
Yehoshua Saguy, the director of
Military Intelligence, “not continue as director” and that
Amos Yaron, the divisional commander, “not serve as a field commander” for at least three years. The Mossad, which had nurtured the alliance with the Phalange, got off scot-free.

No one on the Israeli side was found guilty of direct responsibility for the massacre, only of indirect responsibility. The sole direct perpetrators of the heinous crime were the Phalangists. The “hints and even accusations” that IDF personnel were present in the camps during the massacre were “completely groundless and constitute a baseless libel.” The charges of collusion were similarly specious the commission held.

Sharon demanded that the government reject the commission’s recommendations. When the cabinet convened on the evening of February 10 to discuss the report, the police had to force a path from
Sycamore Ranch for Sharon’s car, which was beset by angry demonstrators, many of them from local
kibbutzim. In Jerusalem, though, pro-Sharon loyalists were holding a raucous demonstration outside the prime minister’s office when he arrived for the cabinet meeting. “As I stopped for a moment to greet them, I was engulfed by a thousand hands reaching out to shake mine and a thousand expressions of warmth and encouragement. But these supporters were not alone. At the same moment another demonstration came marching through the streets, this one composed of
Peace Now people yelling at the top of their lungs, ‘
Sharon rotzeach
(Sharon the murderer),’ their shouts mixing with ‘Arik, Arik, Arik’ from my supporters.”

In the tense debate, with the noise of the demonstrations wafting through the windows, Sharon warned his colleagues that if they accepted the commission recommendations, they would be “branding the mark of Cain on the foreheads of the Jewish people and on the State of Israel with your own hands.” If, on the other hand, they had the courage to reject the recommendation, which would mean new elections, the Likud would win its greatest victory ever.

By 16 votes to 1, Sharon’s, they voted to accept the recommendations. That meant either that Sharon now resigned or that Begin fired him. Sharon writes that the ministers had seemed upset and jealous at the “gigantic, spontaneous crowd of Likud supporters … It was such an irony, I thought, that these loyal people who had gathered there to help were in fact sealing my fate.”

Incredibly, in an omission more telling than any of the hyperbole, Sharon makes no mention in his book of the fact that a rightist fanatic (not one of the demonstrators in his support) threw a hand
grenade into the
Peace Now march, killing one prominent activist,
Emil Grunzweig, and wounding seven others.

Grunzweig’s death, as well as the dramatic funeral the next day attended by many thousands, was in some way a fitting, tragic, traumatic end to the tragic national trauma of the Lebanon War. Grunzweig himself had served, dutifully if reluctantly, as a reservist in Lebanon.

That same day of the funeral, Friday, Sharon told Begin he had decided to resign. The attorney general had ruled that he could stay on in another ministry or as a minister without portfolio.
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“ ‘When do you want to do it?’ Begin asked. ‘I’ll do it on Monday,’ I answered. ‘Why,’ he said after a pause, ‘should it take so long?’ ”
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O
ne effect of Sharon’s removal from the Defense Ministry was that Israel softened its stance in the ongoing, desultory negotiations with Lebanon—now under the presidency of Bashir Gemayel’s brother, Amin—over a much-watered-down draft peace treaty between the two countries. Sharon’s demand for IDF surveillance stations on Lebanese soil was dropped. Toward the end of April 1983, the U.S. secretary of state, George Shultz, embarked on a Kissinger-style shuttle to try to clinch a deal. Israel continued to dig in its heels over the future status of the South
Lebanese Army (SLA), the Israeli-backed, mostly Christian militia under Major
Sa’ad Hadad.
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The Israeli negotiators insisted that the integrity of this force be maintained, even if it was formally incorporated into the Lebanese army.

Judicious arm-twisting by Shultz eventually persuaded “the Israelis, grudgingly, and the Lebanese, fearfully,” to sign, on May 17, 1983, an “Agreement on Withdrawal of Troops from Lebanon.” The title was deliberately unbombastic. Not a peace treaty, as Israel had originally
wanted, but a more modest agreement that the Lebanese parliament could allow itself to ratify without incurring the wrath of Syria and the scorn of other
Arab hard-line states. Israeli forces were to withdraw from Lebanon “within 8 to 12 weeks … consistent with the objective of Lebanon that all external forces withdraw from Lebanon.” This was as explicit a reference as could be made, given Lebanese sensitivities, to the unarticulated core of the agreement: that Israel would withdraw when Syria did, or at least when Syria had credibly committed itself to do so.

The two signatories undertook “to settle their disputes by peaceful means” and to create a “Security Region” in south Lebanon. They affirmed that neither would allow itself to be used as a staging ground for hostile activity against the other. Neither country would intervene in the internal affairs of the other or propagandize against the other.

It was a far cry from the full “normalization” that Israel had initially proposed, with embassies, open borders, and trade ties. But it was an undeniable move away from the official boycott of Israel that Lebanon, along with most Arab countries, had maintained until then. And the agreement held out the hope of a further thaw.

Press and public in Israel had not followed the negotiations with much interest. Expectations from the agreement were low, cynicism sky-high. This assessment was quickly vindicated when Syria, and also the
Druze community in Lebanon, rejected and condemned the agreement. President
Hafez Assad of Syria made it clear that he did not intend to withdraw his troops. President Amin Gemayel’s request that he do so was invalid, he argued. Only the
Arab League could legitimately ask him to go. The Soviet Union’s strong backing of Syria meant that this was unlikely to happen.
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The agreement remained on paper only—and in fact not even that, for though it was ratified by his parliament, President Gemayel never actually signed it into law. The inter-confessional civil war gradually resumed in all its bloody and bewildering complexity, with the various armed militias in constantly changing alignments with each other and with the Syrian forces. The Lebanese army seemed powerless to impose the state’s authority. The multinational force had neither the mandate nor the political will to help it do so. Israeli troops, still deployed deep in Lebanon, sustained ever-mounting casualties, sometimes without knowing which of the local militias was shooting at them or why. Diplomats and
Mossad emissaries maintained their largely fruitless contacts with the different factions.

The Druze began to make life difficult for the U.S. troops stationed in and around Beirut as part of the multinational force. Druze forces,
based high in the Shouf Mountains, started drizzling fire onto the Lebanese army units and American marines on the coastal plain below. Israeli forces in the Shouf also came under attack from Druze guerrillas. An anomalous situation developed in which Israel wanted to withdraw unilaterally from the Shouf, while the Americans pressured it to stay.

Compounding the problem for Israel was the government’s reluctance to admit that it was delaying the withdrawal—and sustaining further pointless casualties—in deference to American demands. On September 4, the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Israeli army was withdrawn from the Shouf Mountains and from the whole of the Beirut area, regrouping along the
Awali River.

On October 23, 1983, a truck packed with dynamite rammed through the inadequately guarded fence of the marine compound
in Beirut and blew up, killing 241 American servicemen. That same day, 58 French soldiers serving in the MNF were killed in another
suicide attack. Reagan insisted he would not be driven out by terror. The marines were replaced, and American forces—including the aged battleship
New Jersey,
anchored off Beirut—started firing back at their various shadowy attackers. But Washington’s heart was no longer in this Lebanese misadventure. Weinberger wanted out, and Shultz did not have sufficient clout to gainsay him. Early in the New Year the U.S. Marines left. By March, the French and the Italians had gone too, and Lebanon was left to its internecine war.
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Israel made a second unilateral withdrawal in June 1985. The IDF pulled back all the way to the border, save for a lingering presence, varying over the following fifteen years from dozens to hundreds of soldiers, who operated alongside the South Lebanese Army militia in a narrow security zone.

Sharon blamed America for the failure of the treaty. “They don’t want to give Israel its full achievements from the war,” he told a party audience in
Tiberias in April 1983, days before Shultz’s arrival on his shuttle mission. But he blamed Israel, too. “No nation can survive,” he pronounced, “if it kowtows to others; even to a superpower.”

At cabinet, where he now sat in the empty role of minister without portfolio, Sharon attacked his successor at Defense,
Moshe Arens, for climbing down over the surveillance stations. When the draft agreement
with Lebanon came up for approval, Sharon let loose such a stream of vituperation—“treachery” and “cowardice” were the milder epithets—that even the depressed Begin summoned the strength to upbraid him. He lashed out at General
Abrasha Tamir, formerly his close military aide, who headed the Israeli military team at the talks with Lebanon. “You are bringing disaster upon this country,” Sharon shouted. Tamir ignored him. The cabinet voted 17 to 2 to endorse the agreement. Later, Sharon attacked the government for acceding to American requests that Israel delay withdrawing from the Shouf.

When Yitzhak Rabin,
as defense minister in the 1984–1988
Likud-Labor unity government, proposed the June 1985 withdrawal, Sharon attacked again. The army should stay where it was on the Awali, he maintained, though with fewer troops. “Look Who’s Talking” was the columnist
Yoel Marcus’s headline: