Death of Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, in 2014
He was an impressive character in the Suez Crisis, the Six Day War, and the Yom Kippur War. He died on January 11, 2014 at the age of 85 in a hospital in Tel Aviv after being in coma situation for a period of 8 years.
When he was just 14 years old, he joined the Haganah group in 1942. At the time, the Haganah group had planned and implemented a number of measures to evacuate Palestinians from their homes and lands where they could easily kill any dissidents if there was any opposition. Such groups formed the first nuclei of the Israeli army after the establishment of the government.
Sharon joined the Jewish towns’ police force in 1947, then he served in the 1948 war at the age of twenty.
At the beginning of 1949, he commanded an infantry company, and in 1951 he became the commander officer of the Central Intelligence Battalion.
In 1952, he asked the Commander of the Army Headquarters to form a military battalion of prisoners who were sentenced to death. Such a request was somehow unacceptable for the Commander of the Army Headquarters due to those prisoners’ incompetence with military techniques; however, that commander finally accepted it following Sharon’s insistence. Sharon named that battalion as the “101 Battalion” and as in his first military operation, he attacked the border village of Al-Qabiya in which 69 Palestinians were martyred and 41 homes were destructed.
Sharon began studying history and Middle East affairs at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1952. For his further education, he began to study law at Tel Aviv University.
In 1964, he decided to go to France to study political science.
After returning from France, Ariel Sharon commanded the Northern Army from 1965 to 1969. Having passed a training course in Britain and obtained the ranking of Major General, he commanded the Southern Army from 1969 to 1973.
After the victory of Israel in the Six-Day War and the simultaneous defeat of six Arab countries, he resigned from the army to enter the political arena. Sharon was elected to the Knesset in the first parliamentary election by the party (Likud). In 1975, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin appointed him as his military adviser.
In the election of 1977, Sharon entered to the Knesset at the top of the independent candidates list. During this period, Menachem Begin appointed him as the Minister of Agriculture and Settlement.
During the Lebanese war in 1982, while Sharon was the Minister of Defense, just between September 16 and 18, the Sabra and Shatila massacre took place. It is estimated that between 800 and 3,500 Palestinian civilians were killed in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese Maronite Phalange Christian militias.
At the age of 85, after 8 years of coma, he was consigned to hell on January 11, 2014 at “Shaba” Medical Center after experiencing a severe drop in vital signs for several days.
