This piece gives former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon too much credit in some ways: Olmert's War by Haim Malka, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 08/03/06. But the following factual observations about how Sharion responded to Hizbullah provocations does bear on the question of proportionality in Israel's response to the July 12 Hizbullah raid:
Ariel Sharon would not have waged this war. In the face of repeated provocations by Hizbullah, Sharon kept his cool time after time. He had his own objective - withdrawing from Gaza first, and then later from the West Bank - and he refused to be dragged into a conflict which would prevent him from achieving his goal. ...
What seemed like a clear response in the first hours of the crisis has become complicated. In the fog of war, military objectives and political objectives have become entangled. Ariel Sharon made a career of blurring this line. Yet, late in his life he realized the limits of military might in achieving political goals. As prime minister he showed the restraint that his enemies - and victims - in Lebanon had prayed for 20 years earlier.
Sharon repeatedly refused to take the bait of Hizbullah provocations despite the pleas of his generals, who argued that the army’s deterrence was eroding. Sharon was a general, too, and he knew what he wanted. Sharon did not blink when the group fired an anti-tank missile into a border outpost killing one IDF soldier in January 2004. In July of the same year, a sniper killed two soldiers inside Israeli territory. The following June, an unprovoked Hizbullah mortar attack killed yet another soldier. Sharon met each assault with a routine bombing of a few isolated guerilla outposts and called it a day. In all, 14 IDF soldiers were killed on the northern border during Sharon’s premiership as a result of dozens of unprovoked Hizbullah mortar and cross border attacks. Sharon would not be distracted.
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