Image makeover for Ariel Sharon as victory nears

By PHIL REEVES

JERUSALEM - The posters are all over the place. Ariel Sharon's jowly features gaze out, half-smiling, half-frowning, a close-up of a wise old uncle poised to deliver a nugget of sound advice. One hand is raised to his face, forefinger running up the cheek.

The message is clear and deliberate. This is not a man - as his enemies allege - who is brutal, narrow-minded or impulsive. This is not a man who oversteps orders, or argues with colleagues. This is The Thinker.

Tomorrow, unless there is a turn-around of stunning proportions, Sharon will become the Prime Minister of Israel at the age of 72, fulfilling an ambition that has been gnawing away at him since he resigned in disgrace as Defence Minister more than 18 years ago.

There will be no more ceaseless fretting in the Middle East over whether the Oslo "peace process" is still clinging on to life. Israel will be led by a man who has called the Oslo accords "national suicide" and publicly pronounced them dead. While he is in power - and that may not be for long - it will remain in this moribund condition.

The Palestinians will have as their neighbour a man who not long ago told the New Yorker magazine that their leader, Yasser Arafat, is "a liar and murderer." They will have a man who has spent a career asserting his view that Jews have an absolute right to settle on their land in the West Bank and Gaza and who as a senior minister, only a few years ago, urged Israelis to "grab the hilltops."

To him, occupying the West Bank was a strategic necessity. Between 1978 and 1981, Sharon (nickname: the Bulldozer) established many scores of settlements in the occupied territories, laying the foundations for what was to become one of the biggest obstacles to peace.

He has made clear that he regards the Gush Katif settlement on the Gaza Strip - an outpost surrounded by 1.2 million Palestinians which Barak's team long ago resigned themselves to evacuating - as vital to Israel's security. He considers it a "concession" for Israel not to take back the West Bank cities of Hebron and Nablus from Palestinian control.

His past remarks suggest that, at most, he would be prepared to allow the Palestinians 40 per cent of the West Bank, far less than Barak was offering. The divided city of Jerusalem would remain under Israeli control, as would the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount. As for the occupied Golan Heights, whose return is a prerequisite for peace with Damascus, forget it.

For the past few weeks the team around Sharon has sought to soften his image, adding the benign contours of a twinkly-eyed grandfather to those of a ruthless Israeli general, admired at home (at least among the right wing) but feared abroad. Time and again, he has told supporters that, as a commander involved in all Israel's major wars, he knows far too much about the horrors of conflict to want anything other than peace.

He talks about "peace with security." But, with his agenda, this can only mean, at best, containment using economic and military force. Even if half of what he says can be chalked up as rhetoric, no Palestinian leader could sign a final peace deal under his terms. Barak's were always unacceptable to Palestinians; Sharon's are far worse.

The Barak campaign has tried hard to peddle the notion that a Sharon victory would be dangerous for Israel. It has produced a TV ad featuring a clip - repeated over and again, against a Vietnam-like backdrop - of Sharon saying that the Lebanon war was "justifiable."

But this does not appear to have worked. Poll after poll places Sharon far ahead.

He is no fool. Those who know him say that he is clever and charming. Unlike Barak, he is an experienced politician, an insider, wise to the demands of realpolitik.

If he is to stay in power for any length of time, he will have to build a lasting coalition in the fractured Knesset. He wants a government of national unity, embracing the Labour Party, including Barak (whom he has said he wants to be Defence Minister).

If he gets it, he will have to moderate his instincts or Israel could be in for a short, wild and very unpleasant ride.

- HERALD CORRESPONDENT

Herald Online feature: Middle East

Map of the Middle East

UN: Information on the Question of Palestine

Israel's Permanent Mission to the UN

Palestine's Permanent Observer Mission to the UN

Middle East Daily

Arabic News

Arabic Media Internet Network

Jerusalem Post

Israel Wire

US Department of State - Middle East Peace Process