This remark is an old favorite in Israel, one that harks back to an era before Israel signed peace treaties with two of its Arab neighbors (Jordan and Egypt) and the Palestinians. But seeing their country convulsed with violence these last three months, many Israelis are inclined to agree with the message.
Polls published Friday show Sharon favored to win the Feb. 6 election over Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak by 14 to 18 percentage points. Barring something short of a political miracle for Barak, Sharon will be Israel's next prime minister.
It is a remarkable turnaround for the 72-year-old retired general and sheep rancher who was once thought to be unelectable, shadowed for nearly two decades by the ghosts of Israel's unpopular war in Lebanon.
In 1983, an Israeli commission found Sharon "indirectly responsible" for the 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli-backed Christian militia at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. He resigned as defense minister as a result.
Ever since, he has held various government ministries and now chairs the Likud party. He is as much a symbol as a politician, an icon of the Israeli right wing, patron of the settler movement, and the archnemesis of the peace camp.
Sharon inspires powerful emotions at every turn. The current Palestinian uprising erupted after Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount on Sept. 28, in a demonstration of Israeli sovereignty over the contested Jerusalem site.
"He is the ugly Israeli. He is all that is wicked in our society, with his cynicism and the unnecessary wars he brought us into," Israel's justice minister, Yossi Beilin, said recently.
The Israeli peace camp fears that Sharon, as prime minister, would steer Israel into a wider conflagration with the Arab countries.
His own Likud Party, meanwhile, is portraying Sharon as a moderate whose impeccable right-wing credentials give him the credibility to sell a peace deal to all Israelis.
