Israelis pay their respects to Sharon

Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s casket, draped in Israel’s blue-and-white flag, made its way to Jerusalem on Sunday aboard a military command car in a somber motorcade flanked by police motorcycles and other military vehicles.

Carried by members of a parliamentary guard as an army rabbi recited Jewish prayers, Sharon’s coffin was placed on a black dais set up in the plaza outside the parliament building, the Knesset. With flags at half staff, a line of generals saluted the iconic soldier, who was also a divisive public figure.

President Shimon Peres and Yuli Edelstein, the speaker of parliament, laid wreaths by the coffin and left the plaza to citizens arriving to pay last respects.

Sharon, who led troops in most of Israel’s major wars and later led the country as prime minister, died Saturday. He was 85.

At the Cabinet’s weekly meeting Sunday, government ministers stood and observed a minute of silence in Sharon’s memory. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sharon was “first and foremost a warrior and a commander, among the Jewish people’s greatest generals” throughout the nation’s history.

“He was tied to the land, he knew that it had to be defended. He understood above everything our revival is our ability to defend ourselves by ourselves,” the prime minister said.

In the Knesset courtyard, hundreds of people — young and old, civilians and soldiers — waited silently in line for a turn to salute, wipe a tear or mumble a quick verse and, in many cases, raise a cellphone for a quick picture.

Visitors included politicians past and present, spiritual leaders of religious denominations, Supreme Court judges, and Ehud Olmert, who became prime minister in 2006 when Sharon suffered a massive stroke and never regained consciousness.

An official state memorial service is scheduled for today, after which Sharon will be buried beside his second wife, Lily, near his family farm in southern Israel. Officials were working out logistical and security concerns for today’s ceremonies, which were to be attended by heads of state and other high-ranking officials.

Local media reported that the army was considering deploying an Iron Dome air defense battery in the area of the farm, which is a few miles from Gaza, where Palestinians celebrated Sharon’s death with sweets and parades.

Throughout the day Sunday, Israeli news media continued blanket coverage, offering commentary from speakers deconstructing his complex character and trying to reconcile the ruthless soldier with the doting family man, the champion of Jewish settlements on occupied land with the man who uprooted some of those same communities.

Danny Dayan, a spokesman for the settlement movement, fiercely opposed Sharon’s move to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and remove thousands of settlers in the process, and denounced unilateral withdrawals as a “bankrupt policy.”

Sharon made many great moves but also tremendous mistakes, Dayan said in a television interview, adding that he prefers to remember Sharon before 2005.

Another speaker was Uri Avneri, a veteran journalist and peace activist who knew Sharon for decades. “Sharon was the father of the settlements, which visited disaster on Israel, but he also had no problem destroying settlements,” he said.