Word: sharone
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Friends can be hard to come by when you're fighting for your political life. During a recent session of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, Ariel Sharon sat impassively as a former supporter harangued him from the podium, addressing the Prime Minister by his nickname, Arik, and attacking his plan to evacuate 7,500 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip. "Why can't you be the man you once were?" shouted the man, a settler named Nissim Slomiansky. "Be the old Arik?" Slomiansky accused Sharon of selling out longtime comrades in his single-minded quest to redraw Israel's borders...
After a 31-year political career during which he has established himself as one of the most divisive, yet enduring leaders in the world, Sharon once again faces a critical juncture. An Israeli state prosecutor last week recommended that Sharon be indicted on corruption charges stemming from allegations that he gave favors to a political supporter in return for payments to Sharon's son Gilad. Sharon denies the allegations, but if the Attorney General goes forward with the indictment in early June, Sharon will probably face enormous pressure from the public and the media to resign. Yet the prospect...
...fate of the plan could be decided next week, when Sharon is due to visit Washington in an effort to win the White House's endorsement. Critics of disengagement range from Palestinian leaders who accuse him of trying to draw unilateral borders and subvert the peace process to right-wing Israelis who say Sharon is rewarding Palestinian terrorism. Many see in the Israeli leader's refusal to compromise with his opponents a familiar, stubborn determination that, while useful in the battles young Sharon won as a general, may prove to be his undoing. Among Sharon's longtime nemeses, there...
...Sharon's plight has made him a lonely man. Up at 5 a.m., he spends most of his time out of public view, working hard to maintain a sense of calm in his office even as his aides charge about outside the door in a flurry of diplomatic, legal and political activity. Last month, when he made a rare visit to the Knesset cafeteria for a lunch of chicken soup and schnitzel, not a single legislator approached his table to join him. Each night Sharon takes a helicopter from his office in Jerusalem to his Negev home, Sycamore Ranch. When...
Still, with his political survival at stake, Sharon has shown flashes of the combativeness that propelled him to past political victories. At a closed meeting of the Knesset foreign-affairs and defense committee last week, Sharon brushed off an opposition politician, Yossi Sarid, who grilled him about whether he could function as Prime Minister while he was under investigation for corruption...