World

Sharon: Violence Not My Fault

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 3, 2000 / 10:05 AM EDT / CBS

While Palestinian officials point the finger at former Gen. Ariel Sharon's visit to a religious site in the holy city of Jerusalem as the spark of recent violence, the right-wing opposition leader insisted Oct. 3 on CBS News' The Early Show it wasn't he that provoked the spasm of Arab-Israeli bloodshed.

"The only one responsible for that is only (Palestinian leader) Yasser Arafat, who orchestrated and instigated and preplanned an outdoors event...that did not start on Thursday but started about 10 days ago," a heated Sharon said from Tel Aviv during a televised interview.

The violence, sparked by the visit of Sharon, the leader of the hard-line opposition Likud party, to a disputed site holy to Muslims and Jews, has claimed more than 80 lives so far - most Palestinian.

Sharon, notorious among Palestinians for launching the bloody war against Arafat's forces in Lebanon in 1982, said he bore no responsibility for the violence in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and in Arab towns and villages inside Israel.

Sharon defended his visit to the site, where two mosques are built over the traditional Jewish site of the biblical Temple Mount.

"We speak about the holiest place for the Jewish people. Jerusalem doesn't belong to us, it belongs to all the Jewish people and that is the holiest place in Israel," Sharon said. "We live in democracy - a really stable democracy - and everyone can visit any place which is under Israeli sovereignty. And Jerusalem and the Temple Mount is under Israeli sovereignty."

Sharon, obviously agitated, added: "As a matter of fact, every Arab can go anywhere."

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the right-wing Sharon's visit last Thursday to the site revered by Muslims as Al-Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, and by Jews as the ancient Temple Mount was "definitely counter-productive."

In a letter to Albright that Sharon made public on Monday, he lashed out at the U.S. criticism, rejecting any suggestion his visit caused tension or ignited riots.

During the five days of clashes, Palestinian gunmen had rushed Israeli outposts bordering Palestinian-controlled areas. Israeli tanks trained guns on luxury apartments in Ramallah, and Israeli helicopter gunships swooped over civilian areas.

Sharon said the violence was orchestrated by Arafat with "terrible incitement" and that Israeli soldiers are merely defending themselves when Palestinians shoot at them.

Sharon's visit to Mount Temple fueled the hatred among Arabs of a man already reviled for failing to prevent a Lebanese Christian massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.

Sharon had to resign as defense minister after an Israeli inquiry found him indirectly responsible.

The Knesset member said he was sorry that so many people have been killed and that Israel remains committed to peace.

Sharon said. "I believe that negotiations will continue. We are committed to that."