Ariel Sharon's transformation from settlement builder to settlement destroyer was sealed in a secret meeting with US envoys in Rome in November 2003: The Israeli prime minister revealed his plan to give up the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank by the end of this year.
For four decades, Sharon had been the main force behind Israeli settlement construction in lands claimed by the Palestinians for their state. In that Rome hotel room, two of his aides say, he became the first Israeli leader to set a clear deadline for dismantling some of them.
And despite vehement opposition -- including accusations that he was betraying the settlers and attempts by hard-liners to topple him -- he pushed ahead with the withdrawal plan, set to go ahead this week.
Yet throughout the political turmoil, Sharon's turnaround has remained an enigma. Sharon aides and pundits offered a wide range of explanations, from psychological to strategic.
The prime minister, known as an uncompromising hard-liner, always had a strong pragmatic streak that allowed him to adjust his views to a changing political situation.
Some say the current round of Mideast bloodletting may finally have made Sharon realize that Israel cannot keep all the land it captured in the 1967 Mideast War. Giving up Gaza may be part of a brilliant tactical move to grab all of Jerusalem and keep the biggest West Bank settlements.
As prime minister, Sharon surrounded himself with moderate advisers who have helped shape the Gaza plan, including his son, Omri, and longtime attorney and friend Dov Weisglass. Sharon also hopes to clear his war-tainted image and secure a place in history as one of Israel's greatest leaders, those close to him say.
Some of his detractors, including Gaza settler leader and legislator Zvi Hendel, said the withdrawal plan was a cynical attempt by Sharon to deflect attention from corruption investigations against him. Prosecutors would be reluctant to go after prime minister who is rekindling peace hopes, his critics speculated.
Sharon himself has said getting rid of crowded Gaza, with some 1.3 million Palestinians, is the only way to protect Israel as a Jewish democracy and keep West Bank areas with religious significance to devout Jews.
He has acknowledged that the hard-liners' dream of keeping all the biblical Land of Israel is over. "We had a dream, we did not succeed in fulfilling the entire dream, but we succeeded in making an important part of the dream come true," Sharon said in a recent speech.
Yet as someone who fostered the settlements, making the decision to withdraw was "as difficult as the parting of the Red Sea," he said.
Sharon biographer Uzi Benziman said the prime minister has always been adept at using people and situations to advance his grander plans. The secular Sharon never had an ideological connection to the biblical Land of Israel, said Benziman, a harsh Sharon critic who writes for the liberal daily Haaretz.
"Sharon is first and foremost an extraordinary opportunist," said Benziman. "He has no problem moving from one position to another and from one party to another."
Arnon Perlman, a top Sharon adviser until last year, said that his former boss has a vision and that the Gaza pullout is part of a long-range plan. "He never thought he would bring final peace, but he certainly thought he would take the steps that would eventually lead to it," Perlman said.
Sharon spent more than two decades in various ministerial posts building settlements. In the mid-1970s, as an adviser to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor Party, Sharon joined squatters on an isolated West Bank hilltop, resisting soldiers who came to evacuate them. Then he negotiated a deal allowing the settlers to stay and build the Elon Moreh settlement, today home to about 1,000 people.
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