JERUSALEM: First Ariel Sharon remodelled himself, now Israel’s ‘Bulldozer’ aims to reshape the landscape of the Middle East forever. Sharon has shifted far enough left to form a centrist party with a platform of pursuing peace and giving up isolated settlements.

He is still no dove, vowing to keep major West Bank enclaves as part of a long-term strategic vision.

But the transformation that began with the 77-year-old ex-general’s widely popular withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip has become complete with Sharon’s departure from the right-wing Likud after it failed to follow his lead.

Ditching the party he helped found three decades earlier was a move typical of the burly master risk-taker.

“He always keeps the initiative on his side and it usually turns out well,” said political analyst Gerald Steinberg.

Until Sharon shocked Israelis by announcing the Gaza pullout in 2003, there was little hint that the man nicknamed the Bulldozer for his bruising style would go into reverse gear to leave a very different legacy.

Sharon fought in all Israel’s wars, notching up battlefield victories — sometimes in defiance of more cautious commanders — and moving in crushing force against Arab fighters.

He was particularly reviled in the Arab world for masterminding the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, during which Lebanese Christian allies massacred Palestinians in two refugee camps.

Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001 and 2003 with a pledge for tough action against militants behind suicide bombings.

Sharon’s dramatic change in direction came late in 2003 when Israeli forces were having greater success in stopping attacks, but violence had still sunk another chance for negotiations on a US-backed peace ‘road map’.

Sharon set out a plan for giving up all the Gaza settlements and four of 120 in the West Bank.

The right-wingers he had encouraged to ‘settle every hilltop’ after Israel captured Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 war were furious at what they saw as betrayal by their old champion.

But by forming an alliance with Labour leftists who would once have laughed at the idea of supporting Sharon, he was able to defeat the settlers and their allies in his own Likud to complete the Gaza pullout in September.—Reuters