Israel Bids Farewell to Sharon, a ‘Complex Man’

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/world/middleeast/israel-bids-farewell-to-ariel-sharon.html

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SDEROT, Israel — Ariel Sharon, the fighter and farmer from Israel’s founding generation who became a prime minister both revered and reviled, was buried here Monday on a hill overlooking his family ranch, amid twin ceremonies in which he was eulogized as a courageous commander and pragmatic politician who relentlessly defended the land he loved.

“Like all historic leaders, all real leaders, he had a North Star that guided him,” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said at a morning memorial in front of Israel’s Parliament building in Jerusalem. “His North Star was the survival of the state of Israel and the Jewish people wherever they resided.”

Though Mr. Sharon’s “actions earned him controversy and even condemnation,” Mr. Biden said, “he seemed never in doubt.” Calling him “a complex man,” Mr. Biden noted that “he also lived in complex times in a very complex neighborhood.”

At the afternoon funeral here, a couple of miles from the Gaza Strip — where Mr. Sharon famously dismantled Israeli settlements in 2005 — dignitaries in dark suits mixed with citizens in jeans and sun hats, some of whom brought bouquets plucked from their own fields. Omri Sharon, the elder of Mr. Sharon’s two surviving sons, addressed his father directly.

“Look around you and see, these people that are gathering around this hill, look how they thank you for defending them, how they cherish you for protecting them and leading them forward,” he said. “You are worthy of your own people, Daddy.”

Mr. Sharon died Saturday at 85 after eight years in a state of minimal consciousness following a stroke that aborted his prime ministership as he was contemplating historic steps to end Israel’s long occupation of Palestinian territory. It was a stark turnabout after a career creating settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and aggressively battling Arab enemies, which had earned him international ire.

Nicknamed in life both the Bulldozer and the Butcher, Mr. Sharon was remembered on Monday not only for his bravery and boldness but also for his humor and sensitivity.

President Shimon Peres, at turns an ally and a rival, called Mr. Sharon “the shoulder on whom Israel’s security rested.” Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister during Mr. Sharon’s term, said he “bore the anguish of a true decision-maker.” Marit Danon, Mr. Sharon’s last secretary, described her boss as “a person who saw human beings around him,” speaking “on an equal level, eye to eye, with everyone.”

Gilad Sharon, Mr. Sharon’s youngest son, noted that his father had defied doctors’ predictions by surviving nearly two weeks after his kidneys failed — just as he had ignored military orders and political protocol throughout his life.

“Time after time you have made the impossible a reality,” Gilad Sharon said during the hourlong service here. “This is how the myth and the legend of a whole nation is created.”

The Israeli military said that shortly after the funeral, two rockets fired from Gaza struck open areas on the Israeli side of the border; two rockets were also launched in the morning. The Israeli Air Force said it had hit what it called “two terror sites” in Gaza in response.

About 800 police officers had been deployed to secure the funeral location, along with the Iron Dome missile defense system.

Neither service drew the numbers organizers had planned for, with empty seats on the Parliament plaza and video screens here beaming over largely barren hills.

The 90-minute morning service, washed by winter sun, mixed personal anecdotes with political messaging. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not miss an opportunity to mention what he sees as the Iranian nuclear threat, and said that despite their deep disagreements, he and Mr. Sharon both believed that Israel’s security should be paramount in any agreement with the Palestinians.

“Arik understood that when it comes to things that are of essence to our security and our existence, we have to stand firm,” Mr. Netanyahu said, using Mr. Sharon’s boyhood nickname. “The state of Israel will continue to steer toward peace while protecting our security.”

Mr. Biden reiterated the United States’ “unflagging” commitment to Israel but, in a nod to the American-brokered negotiations underway, said of Mr. Sharon, “He left us too soon, but the work of trying to reach peace continues.”

Mr. Biden, who wore a black skullcap and sunglasses during the ceremonies, had meetings later with Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Peres. He, along with two Democratic members of Congress and a former American ambassador to Israel, joined ministers from about 20 nations, most of them European.

From Jerusalem, Mr. Sharon’s coffin was carried in a military truck to the Latrun fort, near where he had been seriously wounded in the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Then the cortege made its way to the family ranch here in the Negev desert, where ministers and ambassadors trudged up a dirt road amid the faintest smell of manure to take their places on plastic chairs.

In Jewish mourning tradition, a military rabbi tore the blue button-down shirts of Omri and Gilad, and military officers emptied dozens of white bags of dirt atop Mr. Sharon’s coffin, next to the pansy-covered grave of his second wife, Lily, who died of cancer in 2000.

The son of Russian immigrants, Mr. Sharon grew up on a semicollective farm, and as a teenager joined the Haganah, the pre-state Zionist fighting brigade. He created Israel’s first elite special forces unit, 101, in 1953; commanded paratroops in the 1956 Sinai campaign; and led soldiers across the Suez Canal in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

“In every place that we have marched in, you have always been there before us,” said Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, chief of Israel’s military. “Every target that we have attacked, you have known from previous battles.”

Mr. Sharon faced condemnation abroad for episodes like a 1953 reprisal attack against the West Bank village of Qibya, then under Jordanian rule, in which 69 Palestinians were killed. He was ousted as defense minister after the 1982 Lebanon War, and is still denounced as a war criminal by some human rights groups for the massacres of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut.

At home, Mr. Sharon’s about-face in withdrawing from Gaza made him a traitor to the settlers who considered him a father of their movement. But Mr. Blair said the move, in which Mr. Sharon also abandoned his Likud Party to form the centrist Kadima, must not be misunderstood.

“The idea that he changed from the man of war to the man of peace misses that which defined him,” he said. “His strategic objective never wavered. When that meant fighting, he fought. When that meant making peace, he sought peace.”