Informed Speculation

The hardened warrior was in a unique position to bring peace, by essentially ignoring all the peace plans and road maps, and plunging forward with ‘facts on the ground’:

The impact of Sharon’s departure from the Israeli and wider Middle Eastern political stage could be as great as that of his erstwhile nemesis, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who died in 2004—although in profoundly different ways. Israeli is a well-established democracy, after all, and will suffer nothing like the ever-deepening disarray that has plagued Palestinian politics since Arafat’s death. Sharon ruled on the basis of an elected parliamentary majority, and his replacement will be chosen on the same basis. And yet it is striking how, in recent months, Sharon has managed to break the mold of Israeli politics and initiate a realignment based on politicians’ abandoning traditional party loyalties and lining up behind the old general’s vision. His unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the security wall he has built to secure Israel and the West Bank possessions it claims, and the expectation that a similar unilateral withdrawal would eventually occur in the West Bank as well are not part of any political party’s standing program, nor of any treaty or “road map.” They reflect Sharon’s own vision of a peace concluded without the participation of the Palestinians, based on his long-held premise that “there is no Palestinian partner,” and that Israel’s best interests are served by unilaterally—and occasionally in consultation with the U.S.—resolving the problem of the occupation on its own terms. When his own Likud Party balked, he simply formed a new party, Kadima, supremely confident in his personal standing with the electorate.

It’s not just that we may lose an ally; the world may lose a solution to one of its most intractable struggles…

UPDATE 9:52 a.m.: Good analysis of what this means here at Haaretz, which has become my go-to source on this story…