Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

Nicknamed "the bulldozer," Ariel Sharon elicits strong reactions from all sides of the political spectrum.

Ariel Sharon, a barrel-framed ex-general, realized a lifelong dream when he toppled incumbent Ehud Barak, in the February 2001 special election for Israeli prime minister.

Sharon won in a landslide, and when the liberal Labor party voted to join Sharon's more conservative Likud in a unity government, he was set to lead Israel during what would be a turbulent time in the nation's history.

As his tenure as prime minister began, the second Palestinian intifada was a few months old, and since then, Sharon's time in office has been marked by a sharp escalation in terrorism directed against Israeli civilians. A dramatic rise in suicide bombing attacks by Palestinian terrorists was responsible for the deaths of more than 200 Israeli citizens in the first six months of 2002.

As the leader of Israel, Sharon responded to the violence with the force of an ex-general: Under his direction, Israeli forces fought back. In the spring of 2002, they surrounded West Bank towns and cities, and confined Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat to his headquarters in Ramallah for weeks. Sharon said he would keep the military pressure on until the terror stopped.

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After his election in 2001, Sharon had vowed that he would not sit down to talk with Arafat -- a decades-long foe -- until the Palestinian leadership stopped the violence against Israelis. Through the spring of 2002, the terrorism continued and Sharon's stance on Arafat hardened, with the prime minister calling his rival irrelevant.

Again, Sharon was at the center of a vicious cycle of violence and retribution.

To the Palestinians, according to Palestinian Legislator Hanan Ashrawi, Sharon is considered "obsessive and driven," "ruthless" and "cruel."

• The Israeli government

Mortimer Zuckerman, chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said he can explain the Palestinian anger: "I think they feel strongly about Sharon because ... he has fought them for 50 years, and he has fought them effectively."

Also, Sharon has held a hard line on turning over land to Palestinians, saying that Israeli security, a key theme of Sharon's entire career in both the Israeli military and in Israeli politics, can never be compromised.

Sharon was promoted to major general during the 1973 war.

Born in British-ruled Palestine in 1928, Sharon enlisted in the resistance at age 14. He was shot in the abdomen during the 1948 Israeli war for independence. He developed a reputation for military prowess as a commander in a variety of campaigns, including the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

In 1953, as head of special commando force -- Unit 101 - Sharon led a mission into Jordan. David Shipler, author of "Arab and Jew," tells what happened: "When Arab terrorists infiltrated into Israel ..., Sharon went into a town called Kibya (now in the West Bank, then part of Jordan) and blew up 45 houses in retaliation. Sixty-nine Arab villagers died."

Sharon called the civilian deaths "a tragedy." But he also said that Kibya was meant to teach a lesson: For every act of Arab terrorism, there would be a heavy price to pay. It is a lesson he would return to repeatedly in the years to come.

Sharon left the military in 1973 with plans to retire, but when war returned, he was recalled, promoted to major general and put in command of an armored division. His forces effectively ended the Yom Kippur War when they captured Egypt's 3rd Army and crossed the Suez Canal.

Sharon then helped establish the Likud Party in 1973 and was elected to the Knesset. In 1974 he became Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's special security adviser.

On why he entered politics, Sharon said: "I saw all of the horror of the war.... Therefore, I believe that I understand the importance of peace, if I may say, better than many of the politicians that speak about peace but have never had any experience. For me, peace should provide security."

He joined Prime Minister Menachem Begin's government in 1977 as minister of agriculture and chairman of the ministerial committee for settlements, where he encouraged the establishment of a network of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Revered among the settlers, Sharon argued strongly against returning territories to Arab sovereignty.

As minister of defense in 1982, Sharon returned to battle, orchestrating an Israel operation in Lebanon. Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization were using war-torn Lebanon as a base for deadly attacks against Israel. Sharon led Israeli forces all the way to Beirut.

"We're here," he said, "to get rid of terrorism once and for all." And, on this mission, Sharon's forces drove Arafat and the PLO out, literally to the sea.

The Israeli prime minister views himself as a pragmatist. "I believe in peace that might provide Israel with real security," Sharon once told CNN.

But Sharon's triumph was short-lived. "After Arafat and the PLO left ..., the Israelis permitted Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia to go in to two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, where they massacred 700-800 people," said author Shipler.

An official Israeli inquiry found Sharon indirectly responsible for the killings. Sharon called the massacre tragic and said he had not anticipated the militia's brutality. However, now isolated within the government, vilified by Arabs and Jews alike, he was forced to resign.

Sharon retreated to his ranch. But by the spring of 1999, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's defeat in the general election and subsequent resignation as leader of Likud, Sharon took the reins of the party.

And as Labor's Barak tried to reach an elusive peace deal with the Palestinians, Sharon was one of the prime minister's loudest critics. The Palestinians blame Sharon's visit in September 2000 to the Temple Mount, a Jerusalem site holy to Jews and Arabs, alike, for sparking violent clashes between Palestinians and Iraelis. Sharon said he went to the site with a message of peace, and that his visit was used as a pretext by the Palestinian Authority to launch a planned campaign of violence against Israel.

In the coming months, the violence expanded and Sharon was elected prime minister on a platform of peace through security.

As the toll of Israeli civilians killed in terror attacks continued to mount, Sharon turned to military options. In June 2002, after a bloody terror spree that claimed the lives of 31 Israeli citizens in one week, Sharon sent troops back in to the West Bank for the second time in a matter of months. He vowed to occupy Palestinian territories until the terrorism ceased.

Days later, United States President George W. Bush expressed support for the former general's aggressive anti-terror tactics. In order to win U.S. backing for a Palestinian state, Bush urged the Palestinian people "to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror."