LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ariel Sharon: Foreign Minister
built 261 days ago
During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, while Ariel Sharon was Defense Minister, a massacre of several hundred Palestinians occured in the Shabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. The massacre was done by Lebanese factions aligned with Israel (known as the Phalanges, led by Bashir Gemayel). Israel claimed that Yasser Arafat's Fatah terrorists, who incessantly attacked Israeli civilians on Israel's northern border, were hiding inside the camps, a claim which many disagree with. Sharon reached agreement with these factions that the Israeli army would only surround these camps, while the factions' forces would enter the camps and treat the Fatah militants within.
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Ariel Sharon was in the Israel Army for many years. He fought in numerous battles, and in 1974 he left the army as General. After the army he decided to go to politics. In 1977, he became Minister of Agriculture. In 1981 he became the Minister of Defence.
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Nearly 20 years ago the man who is now Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, sent Lebanese militiamen into the Palestine refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. When they left 36 hours later at least 800 people lay dead after a rampage of murder, torture and rape.
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In 1996, Ariel Sharon was appointed Minister of National Infrastructure and was involved in fostering joint ventures with Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinians. He ... served as Chairman of the Ministerial Committee for Bedouin advancement.
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Netanyahu was succeeded as head of Likud in 1999 by Ariel Sharon but remained a popular figure in the party. When early elections were called in 2001, Netanyahu, who had resigned his seat in the Knesset and ... was ineligible to run for prime minister, unsuccessfully challenged Sharon for leadership of the party.
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Amid desperate attempts to cover up the evidence of direct knowledge of what was going on by Israeli military personnel, the Kahan Commission found itself compelled to find that Ariel Sharon, among other Israelis, had responsibility for the massacre. The commission's report stated: "It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for having disregarded ["entirely cognizant of" would have been a better choice of words] the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and having failed [i.e."eagerly taken this into consideration"] to take this danger into account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the
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