Sharon history of massacres, land usurpation

Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon died on Saturday at the age of 85, after spending the last eight years of his life in a coma. Sharon's life is a history of massacres and usurpation against Palestinians and Arabs and their lands and properties. He was born in British-occupied Palestine on February 26, 1928, to Jewish parents who migrated to Palestine from Belarus. He joined the Jewish militia "Haganah" which committed several massacres and brutal crimes against Palestinians. He fought against Arab troops after the declaration of the Israeli state in 1948. In 1953, he led a group of Israeli paratroopers who carried out a cross-border, night attack on West Bank village of Qibya where 69 Palestinian civilians were killed and several houses were destroyed. In a similar raid, Sharon and his forces killed 37 Egyptian soldiers in the then Egypt-ruled Gaza Strip. He participated in the Israeli-British-French war on Egypt in 1956. In 1967 six-day war, Sharon was a commander of tanks unit. In 1969 was appointed as a commander of the southern Israeli front in the then occupied Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. He supervised massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Beirut by Lebanese Christian militiamen allied to Israel in 1982. An Israeli state inquiry found Sharon, who as defense minister engineered Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, responsible for the camp killings, and he was forced to resign his post. He occupied several ministerial posts including minister of defense, trade, industry and housing. He was elected in the Israeli parliament, Knesset, and was chosen as head of the opposition Likud Party's parliamentary bloc. Sharon was an arch enemy to peace with Palestinians. He rejected Oslo peace framework agreement and described the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat as a "terrorist." His provocative entry into Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest Muslim worship place, in September 2000 sparked the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, which continued for years. In 2001, he was elected as a leader of the Likud Party. In the same year, his party won early election and he formed the government. Since the first day of his post as a prime minister, Sharon decided to do everything to crush the Palestinian uprising. He ordered the army and police storm of several Palestinian cities as well as the bloody repression of Palestinian protesters leading to killing of hundreds of Palestinians in few months. He also led the efforts to expand the illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian land in West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. In 2002, Sharon ordered a four-day siege of the headquarters of late Palestinian Arafat in Ramallah. The Israeli forces enforcing the siege destroy all the Palestinian presidency buildings except the one in which Arafat was in. In a sudden move, Sharon shocked Jewish ultranationalists in 2003 by announcing he would remove all 21 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and four from the occupied West Bank. In 2005, he implemented his unilateral disengagement plan and evacuated the 21 Israeli settlements. In November 2005, Sharon quit the right-wing Likud Party and founded new centrist party named Kadima. Sharon first had a small stroke in December 2005 and was put on blood thinners before experiencing a severe brain haemorrhage on January 4, 2006 that left him coma. He was taken to a long-term care facility in the Israeli capital Tel Aviv where he remained until his death.