Gilad Sharon: Dad had no regrets

When Ariel Sharon’s son, Gilad Sharon, visited New York on Wednesday to talk about the new book he wrote about his father, "Sharon: The Life of a Leader," the members of a lunchtime audience at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations all seemed to want Gilad to do the same thing: channel his father, who has lain comatose since suffering a stroke as prime minister in January 2006.

All the questions they asked Gilad were variations on the same theme: What Would Arik Do?

Would Sharon have regretted withdrawing from Gaza in 2005 after seeing how Israel’s disengagement turned out? Would Sharon have agreed to the swap deal that freed Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Arab security prisoners? What would Sharon have thought about the idea of a demilitarized state? Would Sharon have chosen Ehud Olmert or Tzipi Livni to succeed him as head of the Kadima Party he founded?

For all these questions, Gilad, Sharon’s youngest son, had answers. "My father had no regrets," he said.

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Sharon’s experience having to abandon wounded soldiers in the field during a devastating battle at Latrun in May 1948 taught him that you never leave a soldier behind in Arab captivity, and that philosophy later was adopted as IDF policy, Gilad said. He was emphatic about that.

The 2005 withdrawal from Gaza enabled Israel to strike back against Gaza’s terrorist rulers in a way that would not have been possible were Israel still the occuppying force there, Gilad said. Besides, Israelis overwhelmingly supported the unilateral ceding of Gaza, and the rocket fire from Gaza had nothing to do with the disengagement; it started long beforehand, he said.

On Palestinian statehood, Gilad said that Sharon talked about a demilitarized Palestinian state as early as the late 1970s. "He was always very pragmatic," Gilad said.

Asked whether Sharon ever felt remorse for what happened at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in September 1982, when hundreds (and possibly thousands) of Palestinian Muslims were slaughtered by Lebanese Christian Phalangists in camps ostensibly under IDF control at a time when Sharon was defense minister, the answer was an emphatic no. Just as the Jews did not crucify Jesus, Gilad said, we did not massacre those Palestinians. (An Israeli commission established after the massacre determined that Sharon bore personal responsibility for not preventing the Christians from entering the camp and for standing by while the killings took place.)

What would Sharon have done had he not been felled by a stroke? For one thing, he would never have handed power over to Olmert or Livni — or anyone else; Sharon would have stayed in office as long as possible, Gilad said. Would he have viewed the unilateral Gaza withdrawal as a model for the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem? Certainly not, Gilad said.

Gilad also talked about his father’s current state. Since the stroke, not a single day has gone by that Sharon hasn’t been visited either by one of his sons, Gilad or Omir, or Gilad’s wife. He appears healthy and, unbelievably, has gained some weight. He moves his fingers in response to stimuli. When he sleeps, Gilad said, "he looks like the lord of the manor."

Eventually, the conversation turned to the political ambitions of Sharon’s son. For now, Gilad says, he doesn’t know whether he’ll ever enter politics. He’s a member of the party his father founded, Kadima, but Gilad sounded some notes that seem to the right of Kadima.

Gilad sounded like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he said there will be peace only when the Palestinians "accept our presence as a Jewish state in the region," and "when we see Israel on maps in Palestinian schools."

He mocked the notion that the Arab Spring will result in western-style democracies in places like Egypt, Libya or Tunisia.

He suggested that Jordan one day could become a Palestinian state, if the Saudi-imported Hashemite king falls and the majority-Palestinian population of that country takes control.

But he also said that he believes, as his father did, that it’s better to have a Palestinian state on part of the holy land than autonomy in all of the land. "A border dispute between two states is easier to handle than the moral questions we’re facing in all of Israel," Gilad said. But, he noted, "we have to be very careful about what do we give and to whom."

The book, which Gilad says took him four years to write, is a mix of the personal and the historical, and paints a picture of Sharon from the unique vantagepoint of an admiring son.