Negotiations with Palestinian leaders won't be easy because Sharon remains inflexible on key points. Regarding Jerusalem, the Prime Minister said that it has been "the capital of the Jewish people for the past 3,000 years" and that it is "the united and indivisible capital of Israel", "for all eternity". This is no basis for a future agreement and shows Sharon's bizarre understanding of history. Sharon also puts in doubt Camp David as a basis for peace negotiations. 

Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat is a man who has only partly managed to step from guerilla leader to head of state. Corruption, lack of transparency and absence of rule of law reign in his "empire". Not only Hamas and Hizbollah are out of his control, even his own Fatah does not always seem to follow Arafat. 

On both sides, the Israeli and the Palestinian, imbalanced people seem to have gained the upper hand. Jerusalem could be a city uniting peoples and religions. Jews, Christians and Muslim could set a sign of tolerance. Instead, terror and dogmatism reign. The number of rational politicians and "simple" citizens seems to decline from day to day.

People around the world wonder how the Israeli people could prefer Sharon over Barak. There are multiple reasons: A lot of Israeli do not trust Arafat. They were afraid that Barak was about to make too many concessions. Arafat himself was badly advised to turn down offers Barak made in recent months. Barak's coalition was not very trustworthy either. The ultra-orthodox Shas-Party blackmailed the government to satisfy the demands of its clientele. In August 2000, Foreign Minister David Levy stepped down because of Barak's concessions to Arafat. Last but not least, Barak neglected domestic politics, especially unemployment and criminality. And the 13% of Israeli Arabs who had voted with 95% for Barak in May 1999 refused to follow him once more. Massive abstentions in the February election resulted from this. Hope in this deadlock between Israelis and Palestinians may come from the new American administration, with Secretary of State Colin Powell starting to travel the region at the end of February.

Ariel Sharon (Scheinermann) was born in Palestine in 1928. At the age of fourteen, he joined the Haganah, the Jewish underground military organization (1920-1948). During the War of Independence (1948), he commanded an infantry company. In 1953, he founded and led the special "commando 101" unit which carried out retaliatory operations. Sharon's unconventional methods cost a lot of lives. In 1956, he was appointed commander of a paratroop corps and in the Sinai Campaign, he commanded the conquest of the Mitla peak, which involved heavy losses. Officers under his command revolted against him. An investigation into the refusal to obey orders followed. In 1957, Sharon attended the Camberley Staff College in Great Britain. From 1958 to 1962, he served as infantry brigade commander, later as infantry training academy commander and attended Law School at Tel Aviv University. In 1964, he was appointed head of the Northern Command Staff and, in 1966, head of the Army Training Department. In 1967, he commanded an armored division in the Six Day War, where he showed tactical brilliance. In 1969, he became head of the Southern Command Staff. In the 1970s, he submitted the Gaza Strip to Israeli military control with ruthless methods. Sharon resigned from the army in June 1972, but was recalled to active military service in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War when he commanded a tank division. His crossing of the Suez canal with his tank division proved decisive in the war. At an early point in time, he favored the civil administration of the Sinai by Egypt and employed himself to achieve good relations with Cairo. Sharon's frequent refusal to obey orders hindered him from rising to the top of the military. 

In 1973, Sharon initiated the founding of the Likud block, composed by right-wing and center-right parties. In December 1973, he was elected to the Knesset and favored negotiations with the PLO. He objective was not to integrate the Palestinians into Israel, but to push them into Jordan in order to bring down the King's regime. In 1974, Sharon became a member of Menachem Begin's Cherut party. In 1975, Sharon served for a short time as Yitzhak Rabin's Security Adviser. In 1977, he was again elected to the Knesset for the Shlomzion Party, founded by him because of divergences with Rabin. Following the elections, he joined the Herut party and was appointed Minister of Agriculture by Prime Minister Begin. Sharon pushed for the settlement in Cisjordan, trying to hinder a later secession by the occupied territories. He had doubts regarding the peace process with Egypt but finally ordered the clearing of the city of Yamit and its return to Egypt. Today, Sharon considers this his most important error. Sharon was against the Camp David agreement of September 1978 which foresaw an autonomous status for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and opened up the road to the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty of 1979.

From 1981 to 1983, he served as Minister of Defense. In June 1982, Sharon started the War against Lebanon. He is said to have misled the entire cabinet more than once. He declared the clearing of a 40 km strip on the border his primary goal but secretly, he is said to have prepared a broad-based war against Lebanon with the objective of installing a pro-Israeli regime and chasing or destroying the PLO. In September 1982, one day after the assassination of Lebanon's newly elected President, Bashir Gemayel, Sharon gave Phalange access to the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatila near Beirut. They were supposed to find alleged terrorists but committed a massacre in which between 700 and 2000 Palestinians were murdered. A commission in Israel investigated Sharon's role in these events. The judges accused him of an important wrong decision without holding him directly responsible for the massacre. Sharon had to leave his office and was declared unfit to ever hold the office of Minister of Defense again. But he remained a member of the cabinet without a portfolio. Even today, Sharon calls the War in Lebanon a justified invasion. 

In 1984, Sharon became Minister of Trade and Industry in the government of national unity. In 1986, he moved into an apartment in the Muslim part of Jerusalem, one of the reasons for the outbreak of the first Intifada. In 1992, Sharon switched to the post of Minister of Housing and Construction, where he remained until 1992. In both positions, he pursued a protectionist policy which proved disastrous for the Israeli economy. He also opposed the recovery program instigated by Prime Minister Shimon Peres which freed Israel from hyperinflation. As Minister of Housing and Construction, he favored the construction of thousands of prefabricated houses for remote villages. They remained unoccupied and cost the state billions. In the 13th Knesset, Sharon served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Sharon was one of those within the Likud who opposed Rabin's peace plan. In this heated climate, Rabin was finally assassinated. In the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon served as Minister of National Infrastructure from 1996 to 1998 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1998 to 1999, until Barak's electoral victory. In the position as Foreign Minister, Sharon favored relations with Russia to the detriment of the strategic alliance with the United States. He was re-elected into the 15th Knesset in May 1999 and serves as temporary chairman of the Likud party since the resignation of Netanyahu. Last September, he visited the Temple Mount which was the reason for the outbreak of the second Intifada. As one can easily understand, the widower with two sons, Ariel Sharon, is nicknamed "Bulldozer". He represents a current within Zionism which is in favor of building "Erez-Israel", a "Greater Israel" within biblical borders.

Yasser Arafat was born in Jerusalem in 1929 as Mohammed Abdal Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husaini, the son of a wealthy textile trader. Already as a teenager, he fought against the British mandatory forces. In 1951, Arafat began to study civil engineering at the University of Cairo, Egypt. He also became a bomb expert. From 1952 to 1956, he presided over the League of Palestinian Students. In 1956, he joined the Egyptian Army as the reserve officer in the war against France, Great Britain and Israel. From 1957 to 1965, Arafat lived in Kuwait, where he worked as a construction engineer. There, in 1959, he was a co-founder of the Palestinian movement Al Fatah, the Palestine liberation movement and, later, was declared its spokesman. In 1968, Arafat joined the PLO, founded in 1964, and was elected its chairman. He suffered a setback in 1970/71, when his attempt to overthrow Jordan's King Hussein failed. In 1973, Arafat became Commander in Chief of the forces of the Palestinian Revolution. Among the violent actions committed by Palestinian groups was the assassination of members of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972 by the newly founded organization "Black September". Other setbacks like the loss of his power base in Lebanon led Arafat in 1985 to try to make peace with Jordan's King Hussein, with the US as a mediator. But the attempts failed. Arafat was also involved in the terrorist attack on the luxury liner "Achille Lauro" which further undermined his credibility. In 1986, King Hussein ended the collaboration with the PLO and closed down all Al Fatah's offices in Jordan. At the end of 1987, the first Intifada began. In 1988, Arafat proclaimed in the name of the exiled Palestinian Parliament in Algiers the "State of Palestine". At the same time, the Palestinian National Council officially renounced terror as a means to pursue its objectives. At the end of 1988, Arafat announced the Declaration of Independence and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. In 1993, the PLO and state of Israel mutually recognized each other officially. A few days later, Arafat signed the Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles at the White House in Washington. In October 1993, Arafat was elected by the Central Council of the PLO to be the President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and President of Palestine Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PECDAR). In October 1994, he received the Nobel Peace Prize, together with then Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (assassinated in 1995). On January 20, 1996, Arafat was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority in a general election. In October 1998, he signed the “Wye River” memorandum with the former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Ehud Barak was born in a kibbutz in 1942. In 1959, he joined the Israel Defense Forces. During the Six Day War in 1967, he served as reconnaissance group commander, in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 as tank battalion commander on the southern front in the Sinai. In 1972, Barak led an elite commando unit which stormed a hijacked Sabena airplane. In 1973, he led a commando unit in Beirut which assassinated three high ranking officials of Al-Fatah which were involved in the massacre of the Israeli Olympic delegation in Munich. In 1976, he led the legendary storming of the hijacked airplane in Entebbe. The same year, Barak got a a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and, in 1978, a Master of Science in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University, California. In 1982, Barak was appointed Head of the IDF Planning Branch, promoted to Major General. During the 1982 "Peace for Galilee" operation, he served as Deputy Commander of the Israeli force in Lebanon. In 1983, he was appointed Head of the Intelligence Branch at the IDF General Headquarters. In 1986, he was appointed Commander of the IDF Central Command and, in 1987, he became Deputy Chief-of-Staff. In 1991, Barak assumed the post of the 14th Chief of the General Staff and was promoted to the rank of Lt. General, the highest grade in the Israeli military. Following the 1994 signing of the Gaza-Jericho agreement with the Palestinian leaders, Barak oversaw the IDF's redeployment in the Gaza Strip and Jericho. He played a central role in finalizing the peace treaty with Jordan, signed in 1994, and met with his Syrian counterpart as part of the Syrian-Israeli negotiations. In early 1995, Barak retired from the army. From July to November 1995, he served as Minister of the Interior and, from November 1995 to June 1996, as Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1996, he was elected to the Knesset where he served as a Member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. In 1996, Barak was also elected Chairman of the Labor Party. In 1999, he formed the One Israel Party from the Labor, Gesher and Meimad factions. Barak was elected Prime Minister of Israel on May 17, 1999, also assuming the office of Minister of Defense until the electoral defeat of February 2001.

Shimon Peres was born in Poland (today's White Russia) in 1923. In 1934, as a child, he emigrated to Palestine with his family. He studied at the Ben Shemen Agricultural School and was one of the founders of a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley. In 1943, he was elected secretary of the Hano'ar Ha'oved youth. In the War of Independence, Peres was responsible for arms purchases and recruitment and, in 1948, appointed head of the naval services. In 1949, he headed the Defense Ministry's procurement delegation to the United States. In 1952, he was appointed Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Defense and, from 1953 to 1959, served as its Director-General. Since 1959, Peres has been a member of the Knesset. From 1959 to 1965, he served as Deputy Minister of Defense. In 1965, he left the Mapai Labour Party with Ben-Gurion and became Secretary-General of Rafi. In 1968, he was a key figure in bringing Rafi back to Mapai to form the Israel Labour Party. In 1969, Peres became Minister of Immigrant Absorption. From 1970 to 1974, he served as Minister of Transport and Communications. In 1974, he was appointed Minister of Information and later, Minister of Defense, an office he held until 1977. On his tenure, the Entebbe rescue operation took place. In 1977, Peres was elected chairman of the Labour Alignment. In 1978, Peres was elected Vice-President of the Socialist International. From 1984 to 1986, he served as Prime Minister and, from 1986 to 1988, as Vice Premier and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the National Unity Government. Israel withdrew from Lebanon and an economic stabilization plan was implemented in his tenure as Prime Minister. In the National Unity government from 1988 to 1990, Peres served as Vice Premier and Minister of Finance. From 1990 to 1992, he led the opposition in the Knesset. In July 1992, Peres began his second tenure as Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs as a member of the new government led by the Labour Party. In October 1994, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the Middle East peace process, together with Arafat and Rabin. After the assassination of Rabin, he became Prime Minister and was confirmed by the Knesset in November 1995. In May 1996, Peres lost a close election to Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud block and, in July 2000, surprisingly, the Presidential election to the Likud candidate Mosche Katzav. [Peres not Barak lost the May 1996 election; last sentence corrected on March 13,2001]
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