Sharon, Ariel

(b. 1928)

   Israeli politician. Sharon was born in Palestine and joined the Hagana as a very young man. He pursued an army career, led the paratroopers in the 1956 Suez campaign and was a divisional commander in Sinai in the Six-Day War. Although he resigned from the army in 1973, he was recalled and breached the Suez Canal in the Yom Kippur War. He was a founder member of the Likud party and was elected to the Knesset in 1973 and again from 1977. He was advisor to Prime Minister BEGIN from 1975–7 and minister of agriculture 1977–81 when he was forced to resign over the Sabra and Chantila massacre scandal. He was minister of defence 1981–3, minister without portfolio 1983–4, minister of trade and industry 1984–90. and minister of construction and housing 1990–2. He has always been regarded as a ‘hawk’ and he particularly antagonized the Arabs by buying a house in the Arab quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Since 1991 he has served as Chairman of the Cabinet Committee to oversee Jewish immigration from the old USSR.