Sharon, a well-known hawk on the peace process, warned that conditions lead to more conditions, “so the next day we will have a new condition, and we are going to be pressured. So it might be an endless pressure.”
Sharon, who was a general in Israel’s army, is as famous for his bold exploits in the 1973 Yom Kippur War as he is infamous for his alleged excesses during the 1982 war in Lebanon, which, among other things, resulted in the mass murder of Palestinian civilians by Christian militiamen in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside Beirut.
“Independent of the political opinion of everyone, there’s no doubt in my mind that Gen. Sharon has become a legend in his own life,” Meir Rosenne, president of the Israel Bonds Organization, said when he introduced Sharon.
Sharon lived up to his reputation for outspokenness by questioning Secretary of State James Baker’s recent meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad during the continuing U.S. quest for peace in the Middle East.
He asked what the two men could have talked about during their almost 10 hours of meetings.
“It’s when they were negotiating, at the same time, that ships brought ground-to-ground missiles.” to Syria, he said, referring to Syria’s reported acquisition of new longer-range Scud missiles from North Korea.
He reminded people that Assad had been linked to backing a variety of terrorist groups responsible for the deaths of hundreds, not least of all the more than 200 U.S. Marines killed in a 1983 terrorist bombing in Beirut.
Sharon called for a reduction of weapons in the Middle East and the “equalization of military strength between Israel and the Arab countries.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
