You aren't paying attention. I'm not talking about whether Sharon is a sweetie or not. Irrelevant. If it wasn't him, it would have been some other strongarmed leader.

Arafat all but deliberately put Sharon into office. In fact, he almost certainly did. Every action, every bombing, every attack that he and his terrorists instigated was deliberately designed to create the maximum provocation for an extreme Israeli militant response. Do you think this was accidental? Arafat and his cronies would have to be blindingly stupid to have not realized that Israel, its army, and its electorate would react exactly as they did. And they are not blindingly stupid. Barak warned before the elections that it was him or war. Arafat could have ramped down whenever he wanted long before Barak was driven out of power. Did he?

Now with Palestinians under the "brutal attacks" of Israel, Palestinian sympathizers are dancing to exactly the tune that Arafat has been playing since the intifada began. The responses from the U.N., from Europe, from the worldwide Left, and from people like you, were as predictable as sunrise. Arafat is riding a new wave of world sympathy, he's going to be released now without restrictions, the Israelis are now compared with Nazis, and all it cost him was some easily replacable Palestinian cannon fodder. You'll notice he never got his own hair mussed, and despite the big show of his confinement, I can guarantee he never missed a meal.