Prepare To Evacuate

Ariel Sharon wants to pull out of Gaza, but a bribery scandal could force him from office first

Friends can be hard to come by when you're fighting for your political life. During a recent session of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, Ariel Sharon sat impassively as a former supporter harangued him from the podium, addressing the Prime Minister by his nickname, Arik, and attacking his plan to evacuate 7,500 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip. "Why can't you be the man you once were?" shouted the man, a settler named Nissim Slomiansky. "Be the old Arik?" Slomiansky accused Sharon of selling out longtime comrades in his single-minded quest to redraw Israel's borders according to his own design. After listening...

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