As a massive stroke ended Ariel Sharon’s tenure as Israel’s prime minister, commentators around the world were predicting negative consequences for the long-stalled Israeli/Palestinian peace process.

Love him or hate him — and there are few people who don’t have strong feelings about Sharon — it is almost universally agreed to that during the past five years he has matured into an elder statesman of the nation.

To the surprise of many, Sharon’s powerful commitment to the “Land of Israel” as envisioned by Zionism’s founding fathers had apparently been tempered by the realization that sacrifices and hard choices were necessary to guarantee the survival of the state he helped build and, from the perspective of Israelis if not most Palestinians, defended for the past half-century.

Yet the pessimism over the future of Israel’s negotiations with the Palestinians is unwarranted. This is mainly because for all his singularity as a political figure, Sharon’s core beliefs and goals represent the mainstream of Zionist and Israeli thought and policy during the past century.

He was the “bulldozer” and the architect of Israel’s settlement policies; he famously urged Israelis to “move, run, grab more hills, expand the territory” based on his belief — one long shared by Zionist and Israeli leaders — that “everything that’s grabbed will be in our hands. Everything we don’t grab at present will be in their hands.” — Beliefnet.com