Ariel Sharon, leader of the Israeli opposition Likud steers clear of the foreign press to avoid questions about his role in massacres of Arab civilians. PHIL REEVES reports.
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 say – who is brutal, narrow-minded or impulsive. This is not a man who oversteps orders, or argues with colleagues. This is "The Thinker".
In three days, unless there is a turnaround of stunning proportions, Mr Sharon will become the Prime Minister of Israel at the age of 72, fulfilling an ambition that has been gnawing at him since he was forced to resign in disgrace as Defence Minister more than 18 years ago.
There will be no more fretting in the Middle East over whether the Oslo "peace process" is clinging to life. Israel will be led by a man who described Oslo as "national suicide" and publicly pronounced the accord 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 and occupier a man who told the New Yorker magazine that their leader, Yasser Arafat, was "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, no matter that it contravened international law.
Between 1978 and 1981, Mr 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. Nothing about his recent conduct suggests he has regrets.
He has made clear he considers the Gush Katif settlement on the Gaza Strip – an outpost surrounded by 1.2 million Palestinians that Ehud Barak's team long ago resigned themselves to evacuating – as vital to Israel's security.
Sharon considers it a "concession," that horribly abused word in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, 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 Mr Barak was offering.
Jerusalem would remain under Israeli control, as would the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, where his visit on 28 September lit the touchpaper that set off the intifada, which will soon have claimed 400 lives.
As for the occupied Golan Heights, whose return is a prerequisite for peace with Damascus. Forget it. He has stressed that he has no intention of giving them back.
For the past few weeks, the team around Mr Sharon has tried 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 (the only crowds his handlers allow him to address) that, as a commander involved in all Israel's big 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. No Palestinian leader could sign a final peace deal under his terms. Mr Barak's proved unacceptable; Mr Sharon's are far worse.
Concerned to avoid awkward questions about his past, he has been steering clear of the foreign press. After all, he has nothing to gain by being pounded over his resignation as Defence Minister after the 1982 Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres; or about the ruthless slaughter of several score Arab men, women and children at Kibya by Unit 101, the élite corps he founded in 1953 to lead retaliatory strikes against Palestinian guerrillas; or about the mass assassinations and house demolitions in Gaza in the early 1970s when he was head of the Israeli armed forces' southern command.
The Barak campaign tried hard to pedal the notion that a Sharon victory would be dangerous for Israel. They air a television advertisement, again and again, against a Vietnam-like backdrop, of Mr Sharon saying that the war in Lebanon was "justifiable".
But poll after poll places Mr Sharon miles ahead, and Israelis have been casting round for explanations about what is happening. They cite the perennial sense of national insecurity, wakened by the killing of more than 50 Israeli Jews in four months, and by several big bombs inside Israel proper.
They blame the erratic and ineffectual policies of Mr Barak, who has bombarded Palestinian towns one day and negotiated with Mr Arafat the next.
They speak about their loss of faith in Mr Arafat (ignoring the rift between the Palestinian leadership and many of those doing the killing), and the need for a strong Israeli leader to knock him down to size.
Different segments of Israeli society, Russian immigrants, Israeli Arabs, ultra-Orthodox, downtrodden Sephardi Jews, field different reasons for abandoning Mr Barak, but the effect is the same.
The Israeli left is watching in utter dismay, disillusioned by Mr Barak but appalled by Mr Sharon, and gripped by foreboding over the possible consequences, deeper international isolation, cooling relations with the US, prolonged guerrilla war, more human rights abuses by their own army, more deaths.
Will there just be more stagnation, they ask, or will he try to bludgeon the Palestinians into submission with force, for instance, by seizing back parts of the West Bank?
Mr Sharon is no fool. Those who know him say he is clever and charming. He is an experienced politician, wise to the demands of realpolitik.
If he is to stay in power, he will have to build a lasting coalition in the deeply fractured Knesset. If he gets it, he will have to moderate his instincts. If not, Israel could be in for a short, wild and unpleasant ride.
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US Department of State - Middle East Peace Process
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