Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: New man with new policy

Friday, Feb. 9, 2001 | 9:53 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

YASSER ARAFAT and his followers have elected Ariel Sharon as Israel's prime minister. No matter what concessions Prime Minister Ehud Barak made they weren't enough. Following an old, but successful, pattern, the Palestinian Authority whipped up street violence and bombings. This seemed to work for a short time, but eventually the demands and violence undermined the man making concessions, Ehud Barak.

I was in Israel when both Barak and Arafat were elected to office. Arafat, in 1996, promised to work for peace and straighten out the monetary mess created within the Palestinian Authority. He did neither.

Barak was elected two years ago, promising to bring the troops home from Lebanon and to make peace with the Palestinians. The troops withdrew from the Lebanon security zone, but Hezbollah violence followed them. He withdrew from Gaza and most of the West Bank and even offered to allow a Palestinian capital in part of Jerusalem and gave them authority over Muslim holy sites. What he offered was too much for the Jews and would never be enough for the Palestinians.

Arafat returned to the rhetoric he had used nine years ago when he called the Jews "dogs," "trash" and "dirt." Last summer he had his schoolchildren in summer camps learning how to use weapons and hating the Jews. Yes, this was the same Arafat who has pledged to drive the Jews into the sea and cuddled up to Saddam Hussein and encouraged him to fire Scuds into Israel's cities. I was there when the Palestinians stood on rooftops and cheered as Saddam's Scuds went over their towns on the way to Tel Aviv.

The voters of Israel had enough, and now have turned to Sharon -- a no-nonsense military and political figure. In the past, and again in recent weeks, Sharon became a target for the press in our country as well as Europe and every Arab nation. The writers recalled that an Israeli government commission had rebuked him for the Christian Phalangist killing of Palestinians in Lebanon in 1982. No, his troops didn't do the killing, but the commissioners believed he could have prevented it.

Recently several press accounts have thrown these charges out to readers without explanation. Some writers tell readers that the press accounts so upset Sharon that he filed a libel suit against Time magazine and lost. The truth is that an American jury found the magazine guilty of defamation and falsehood, but not malice.

There's no doubt that Sharon is a hardliner and is hated by Arabs and large numbers of Israeli liberals. Nevertheless, he has proven he is not only a military hero but is also a very deft politician. How he has survived politically for the past 19 years is confounding. He means different things to different people, but everybody has an opinion about him.

Several years ago I sat in his very modest office doing an interview for a column. He didn't dodge a question and gave complete and clear answers. When the interview about issues was over we visited for a longer period of time. Sharon and I talked about history and our lives as young farmers. Then he excused himself so he could go to the family farm to help his aging mother pick fruit.

I wonder which Sharon was elected to office. Maybe a combination of them all -- politician, farmer, soldier and family man.