Warrior [antikvár]

Foreword by Uri Dan On February 6, 2001, the citizens of Israel elected Ariel Sharon as their prime minister. He accepted this position—one which few ever thought he would attain—with spiritual calm, but also with full seriousness, reflecting the single-minded purpose, as Winston Churchill once called it, with I« which he approached this awesome duty. Because to serve as prime minister of the Jewish state is to assume responsibility for the endre Jewish people, who have achieved their 2,000-year-old dream of reestablishing their homeland. The people of Israel elected Ariel Sharon at a pivotal moment in their history, a time of critical danger that had seen the country, for the previous four months, dragged into an intolerable war of attrition, accompanied by waves of violence, terrorism, and hateful incitement initiated by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Sharon had promised to restore security and revive the prospects of peace that Israelis so deserve and for which they have longed since their nation was created in 1948. And the people of Israel placed their trust in him, propelling him into office with an unprecedented electoral majority—62.38 percent. It was a tribute to his well-deserved reputation for handling many of the nation's critical struggles and crises, problems that others regarded as "missions impossible." Yet Sharon understood that in becoming prime minister, he was assuming the toughest assignment of all those he had previously known. After all, he had seen the war clouds gathering in the Israeli skies years before they appeared and had tried his utmost, through the many government and political positions he'd held, to keep those threats from coming to reality. Since this book first appeared in print, Sharon has faced many difficult challenges, both political and personal. Perhaps none was more painful than the death of his wife, Lily, of whom he wrote in the original dedication of this book, her "love and support have been my inspiration and strength." And yet, characteristically, he never lost his basic optimism. Though much of the world knows him by the title of this autobiography, he is fundamentally a man of peace. "We can control our destiny," he said in a message to Israelis shortly after his election. "United, 1 believe, we can win the battle for peace. But it must be a different peace: one with full recognition of the birthrights of Jews in their one and only land; one with security for generations; and one with a united Jerusalem, the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel forever."