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June 4, 1992
"Peace for Galilee helped bring about
peace talks" - Sharon
By JACOB WIRTSCHAFTER
"Without 'Peace for Galilee' there would be no diplomatic
process with the Arab states today," Housing and Construction
Minister Ariel Sharon told a Tel Aviv press conference yesterday.
"It was only after the removal of the PLO from Beirut that
they realized that they did not have a military option," he
said at the conference, which took place 10 years after the
Lebanon War and 20 days before Knesset elections. Sharon called
the press conference to argue that Operation Peace for Galilee,
launched when he was Defense Minister, was still delivering
security and political benefits for Israel.
Sharon said he was shocked by the increasing politicization
and exploitation of the casualty figures from the war to serve
the "partisan purposes of the left, headed by Yitzhak Rabin.
If we were to engage in the same kind of political casualty-counting
that Labor does, we would have to point out that thousands
more died in Labor-initiated wars than in Operation Peace
for Galilee," he said.
Rabin, who has angered the Likud with an election commercial
emphasizing his role in pulling Israeli troops out of Lebanon,
was criticized by Sharon, who pointed out that Rabin himself
said Operation Peace For Galilee was "unpreventable and necessary."
Sharon told defense and diplomatic reporters he was not opposed
to the withdrawal from Lebanon, but added that Israel had
sought a wider security zone, "something we could have achieved
then with little political cost.
"Unfortunately," he added, "we were forced to withdraw into
a security zone that still allows Katyusha rockets to fall
in the Galilee." Sharon dismissed suggestions he was ill-informed
on the strength and extremist political leanings of Lebanese
Shi'ite groups, and added that while Hizbullah and Syria still
pose dangers on the northern border, "life in Kiryat Shmona
and Nahariya is much calmer and less frightening now than
it was before Operation Peace For Galilee."
Sharon said he believed there would eventually be a reassessment
of the Lebanon war because of the political and military gains
achieved after the removal of the PLO threat from Israel's
borders. "I believe one day the findings of the Kahan Commission
will be overturned in a democratic manner and its conclusions
lawfully erased from the public record," he said. Shortly
after Sharon's press conference, Meretz spokesman MK Yossi
Sarid denounced the former defense minister's statements and
characterized the Lebanon war as a "wasteful, stupid and bloody
chapter in our history that was aimed more at scaling down
the Palestinians as a political entity than ensuring security
for the north of Israel."
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