Sharon was first elected Prime Minister in February 2001, just months after walking through east Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, in an action that sparked the second Palestinian uprising. In November 2005, he left the right-wing Likud to set up a new party, Kadima, frustrated by hardliners opposed to his withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza that year and to any further concessions in the occupied West Bank. In an extraordinary and controversial career stretching back more than half a century, the 85-year-old made it his mission to safeguard national security. DUBBED ‘THE BULLDOZER’ He became convinced that Israel needed to separate from the Palestinians and unilaterally determine its own borders. Born in British-mandate Palestine on February 27, 1928, to parents from Belarus, Sharon summed himself up in the title of his autobiography: “Warrior”. Impetuous and daring, Sharon proved himself an artful soldier and shrewd politician who pioneered some of the most far-reaching changes in Israeli history. While his administration was initially seen as the most hawkish in Israeli history, less than four years after his 2001 election, it withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza, Palestinian territory occupied in the 1967 war. But nothing could redeem Sharon in the eyes of his Palestinian foes. Shortly after his massive stroke in 2006, Hamas said the Middle East would be better off without him. Dubbed “the Bulldozer” both for his style and his physique, Sharon is also remembered by Arabs as the “Butcher of Beirut” for the massacres of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila by a Lebanese militia, while Israeli troops stood by.
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