Tag Archives: Ariel Sharon

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Biden multi-tasks: peace talks with memorial service

Vice President Joe Biden took advantage of a key opportunity today to visit with Israeli President Shimon Peres about the need to keep peace talks going with the Palestinian Authority.

Biden presses Israel on peace talks

Biden went to Israel to attend the memorial service for the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who died over the weekend at age 85.

The VP’s message was that Israel should recognize Palestinian autonomy while seeking guarantees of its own security.

For his part, Peres told Biden that the Palestinians aren’t the “enemy.

“They are our neighbors and our friends,” he said, adding that terrorism is “destroying their fabric.”

That’s a realistic view of life in that terribly troubled region.

“Anytime that you have a leader from the United States as significant as Vice President Biden sitting down with the prime minister of Israel, which Vice President Biden will be doing while we’re here, there’s an opportunity for progress,” she said. “Every time there is an opportunity for progress, for the United States to be in a position to help Israel in the cause of crafting and finalizing a two-state solution, we take that opportunity.”

I’m reminded of what the great Winston Churchill once said about the value of talking. “To jaw-jaw always is better than to war-war,” Churchill said.

Keep jawing.

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Ariel Sharon, the warrior’s warrior

Ariel Sharon was fearless in his belief in Israel.

He fought valiantly for its creation and fought against its enemies when they attacked it. Sharon, who died this week after lying in a coma for years, made no apologies for anything he ever said or did on behalf of his country.

As New York Times essayist Ronen Bergman notes, Sharon could have been the one to make peace with the Palestinians. Somehow he fell short of that noble goal.

I’m kind of reminded of the axiom of how “only Nixon could go to China,” referring to the notable cold warrior President Richard Nixon opening the diplomatic door to the People’s Republic of China, governed by the hated communists. President Nixon made the correct overture in the early 1970s and it changed the geopolitical landscape forever.

Sharon, who served as Israel’s prime minister, also had that kind of credibility is it related to the Palestinians, with whom he fought on the battlefield. He could have been the one to broker a deal with the hated neighbors who have been committed to the destruction of Israel.

As it turned out, it fell to another battle-hardened warrior, Israelis Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to reach a peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader Yasser Arafat. The two men shook hands at the White House in a ceremony moderated by President Bill Clinton.

Two years later, Rabin would die at the hand of a rabid Israeli nationalist assassin who hated him for the deal he reached with Arafat.

Would such a fate have befallen Ariel Sharon? He could have shown additional courage by striking a peace deal. Sadly, he didn’t take fullest advantage of his own Nixon moment.