Ex-Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is dead

Ariel Sharon, the former Prime Minister of Israel, has passed away aged 85. He, an acclaimed military leader who had fought in all of Israel's major wars, left the scene as a hugely polarizing figure of international politics. He is much hated in the Arab world who hold him responsible for orchestrating massacre of Palestinians refugees with the help of Lebanese Christian military in 1983. 
He had served as the 11th Prime Minister of Israel from 2001 until he was incapacitated by a stroke in 2006. He spent nearly eight years in vegetable state before he finally succumbed to organ failure. 

Peace Efforts:

Withdrawals of Jewish settlers from Gaza

• He as the PM, being a pragmatist which he was, had forseen the strong likelihood of a separate palestinian state.
• So, as a step towards a final peace settlement, had initiated a course of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a small portion of the West Bank.
• The move was aimed to delimit more compact Israeli settlement blocks.
• In addition the erection of  450-mile barrier along and through parts of the West Bank was meant to provide a defensible borders preventing terrorist attack from the other side.
• The barrier did reduce infiltrations by militants into Israel, however, it invited wrath of many right wingers including his own Likud party.
• So convinced he was with the vitality of this move that he floated his own party Kadima breaking away from his own.
• He then dissolved the Knesset seeking a fresh term with mandate to go ahead with his vision.
• In an unexpected turn of events he suffered a stroke just before the election in 2006 which would stall all his resettlement plans for good.
• The stroke which left him debilitated would finally conclude with his death in January 2014.

Controversy:

• Through his life he courted controversy thanks to his stubbornness, agression, unilateralism and apparent disdain for diplomatic efforts to bring the elusive peace.
• He was found guilty of indirectly helping a massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee capms (Israeli controlled area) in Beirut during Lebanon civil war in 1982.
• The purge was estimated to kill as many as 3500 refugees, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, by Lebanese Christian military with logistical supports from Israeli forces.
• He, the then Defence Minister, had later been forced to resign when charged guilty by investigative Kahan Commission.
• The incident painted him as "the Butcher of Beirut" in Arab world.

More

• He was the first-ever Israeli Prime Minister to visit India in September 2003 and saw it as an emerging world power.
• Autobiography: "Warrior" in 1989.