Hard Times, Hard Man

By Matt Rees/Sderot, Negev Desert

The heavy scents of bougainvillaea and manure mingle in the hot afternoon air at Shikmim Farm. Ariel Sharon pulls down the brim of his black Australian bush hat--a Jewish Crocodile Dundee. On his thick fingers, he is counting off the names his political enemies hurl at him: "Hard-liner. Extremist. Rightist. War criminal." His 1,500 acres on the edge of the Negev Desert is one of the few private farms in Israel and a refuge from the controversy that has followed him through 55 years in the military and in politics. Sharon, 72, the leader of Israel's right-wing Likud Party, leans his portly frame against a metal pen, and two dozen startled Awassi sheep suddenly flee across the straw. Laughing, Sharon says, "Even the sheep are afraid of me."

It is not only the sheep who are unnerved. In the eyes of many, it was Sharon who touched off the Holy Land's latest crisis when he visited the Temple Mount--Arabs call it Haram al-Sharif--in September, infuriating Palestinians and triggering a new intifadeh. The visit set off speculation: Did Sharon know what would happen in reaction to the visit? Did he plan the trip as a way to begin a push for power? Does the old cowboy feel any remorse about what happened in the violent weeks after his stroll? If he does, he hasn't been showing it.

What he has been showing is his famous attraction to center stage. Amid the latest violence, Israel's opposition Shas Party gave Prime Minister Ehud Barak a one-month "umbrella" of political support, a temporary reprieve from domestic political pressure. But next week that umbrella is set to close, and Barak must figure out how to hold his government together. He has two choices: cut a deal with the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party or swallow hard and hold hands with Sharon. It will very probably be Sharon's last bid for power--the final attempt of a legendary general to grab his country's highest office. If his sheep are scared, they have reason. Sharon has shown a willingness to sacrifice to get what he wants.

It is worth stopping for a moment to look at Sharon as more than just the one-dimensional stereotype he has become: the hard-line former Defense Minister who led Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and still refuses to shake Yasser Arafat's hand. For starters, no one calls him Ariel, Hebrew for lion. He is known universally in Israel by his nickname, Arik. And though he packs a lot of weight on his shortish frame these days, he was once a slightly bearish but, in some circles, sexy military hero. A photo of him from the 1973 October War shows him standing next to Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, both with the satisfied grins of men doing what they were made to do. And something else: Sharon's head is bandaged, a nice counterpoint to Dayan's patched eye and a reminder that here were two men ready to bleed for their young country. In private, he is a fan of violin music, known as a generous host with a quick wit. But in the end, to most Israelis, Sharon is a hard man, a man for hard times.

It is that reputation that has shaped how he is operating in the chaos of Israel's current political disequilibrium. In the blink of an eye, Israel has gone from a land pregnant with hope for peace to a place where proponents of the peace process have been all but discredited. Sharon maintains he is in favor of peace talks, but mildly says his version would continue "down a different line from all those leftists who never saw the horrors of real war like I did." In practice, that would mean pressing Arafat much harder--particularly on the issue of controlling extremists such as Hamas--before agreeing to any deal. But a deal, Sharon insists, would still be part of his plan.

The peaceniks don't buy it. To them, Sharon embodies the old expansionist Israel of settlements and the Lebanon war. For Palestinians, he's a symbol of the slaughter that befell them at the hands of Israel's Lebanese Christian militia allies in the Sabra and Shatila refugee area near Beirut. The official government report found that Sharon as Defense Minister had "indirect responsibility" for the massacres, and that event remains an essential part of the Arab vision of him.* "For us," says Ziad Abu Amr, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from Gaza, "he could never be anything except a murderer and criminal."

But though Palestinians on the street scream abuse against Sharon, their leaders know he's not their problem--yet. At a recent meeting with European visitors in Gaza, aides say Arafat mockingly proclaimed himself unfazed by the prospect of Sharon's sitting across the negotiating table: "Sharon frightens Barak a lot more than he frightens me." Sharon, Arafat says, could deliver what little he promises, unlike Barak, who in the eyes of many Palestinians seems to overreach at times.

Barak--a former general himself and commander of Israel's special forces--has been willing to confront Sharon head on. For two weeks last month, Sharon and Barak haggled over the idea of an emergency coalition between left and right--something Israelis call a national-unity government. Barak wanted Sharon included to bolster his minority government. But Sharon set out to exact a high price, demanding a veto over peace-process issues. Barak's team wavered. Two weeks ago, Sharon's chief negotiator, Likud legislator Meir Sheetrit, demanded a decision. "Let's cut the bulls___," he remembers saying. "I want to do a deal on the veto item." Barak wasn't playing. The next day the Prime Minister moved to cut the ground out from under Sharon, appearing on television to deny that he'd given Sharon a veto. And in a one-two punch, the Prime Minister blindsided Sharon by striking a deal with Shas.

Sharon isn't just taking fire from the left. Inside his own party, he is stalked by ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Cleared of corruption charges, Netanyahu is the favorite to unseat Sharon as Likud leader and perhaps to topple Barak. Leading Barak in all the polls, Netanyahu would prefer to see the Prime Minister fall, which would prompt new elections. So Sharon needs to move fast: his ideal play would be to cut a deal with Barak that would lever him into power and keep Netanyahu out of the picture. Sharon would stick around just long enough to establish himself firmly as Israel's conservative leader-in-waiting. Then he'd pull the plug and seek vindication at the polls.

In the kitchen of his farmhouse, he pets a bouncy German shepherd named Schwartz and reminisces about his parents. Samuil and Vera farmed avocados. When the Zionist movement split in the 1930s, they were ostracized for joining the right wing. Their resentment still boils within Sharon, as does their determination. "My parents never surrendered," he says. Neither will he. Barak's chief political negotiator, Communications Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, talked to Sharon each day last week and thinks he can still make a deal. "I'm very happy with what I heard," he says. Sharon was just happy to hear the talking at all. It's the music of a man marching closer to power every day. For the old soldier, halting the march is never an option.

--With reporting by Jamil Hamad and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem

*In 1985, Sharon lost a libel suit against TIME for its story on his role in the incident, but the federal jury in Manhattan did fault Time for careless and negligent reporting and the magazine retracted a key part of its story.

With reporting by JAMIL HAMAD AND AHARON KLEIN/JERUSALEM