THE GRAVEYARDS, Charles de Gaulle once remarked, are full of indispensable men. Ariel Sharon would doubtless agree.

De Gaulle and Mr Sharon have more than a sense of irony in common. Both were brilliant yet immensely controversial military men, prone to viewing “orders” as mere advice to be assessed on its merits. Each rose to the highest office late in life and after a long period of political exile. And both were accused of betrayal by their most enthusiastic original supporters — de Gaulle for driving through Algerian independence and Mr Sharon for forcing the closure of Jewish settlements in Gaza.

The main differences between the two are that the Israeli Prime Minister was considerably more successful as a commander on the battlefield (then again, he did not have to lead the French) and that he is consistently more modest.

De Gaulle was not an indispensable man, because the Fifth Republic that he imposed on France was strong enough by the time of his resignation to cope with his departure. Mr Sharon will not, despite the understandable concerns to the contrary, be indispensable either because he has already altered Israel so much that the political landscape that he primarily shaped can also endure after his death, incapacity or retirement. It is not true that the “peace process” has depended upon him staying in power. The die is already cast on the Israeli side of that dialogue. It is not, alas, anything like so well established on the other side.

Mr Sharon’s dispensability can be explained by three factors. The first is that his recent moves have been an effect of, as well as a cause of, reform. Like de Gaulle, he defined and personified the “legitimate Right”. His personal credibility as the man who had saved his nation in 1973 (de Gaulle, of course, merely spent 30 years behaving as if he had single-handedly saved his country in the mid-1940s) meant that, if he ruled that an initiative was compatible with Israel’s security, that was the end of the debate as far as mainstream centre-right opinion was concerned.

By accepting Ehud Barak’s withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon when he became Prime Minister (the ultra-Right wanted to send soldiers back) and by determining that the Gaza Strip had to be abandoned wholesale and that, in principle, certain West Bank settlements would have to be dismantled as well, Mr Sharon has ensured that at some moment all this will happen. If he had died in 2003, however, the outcome might have been different. Furthermore, Mr Sharon, stubborn perhaps but never sentimental, switched his position because an overwhelming military and political logic convinced him to do so. That rationale remains as impressive an imperative for future leaders as it has been for him.

Mr Sharon’s new Kadima political movement has not been a personal plaything but is the inevitable consequence of the changed direction of Israeli politics. A vast space had opened for a party that was tough on security but was willing to make territorial concessions, that was broadly secular while having genuine respect for those who were devoutly religious, that favoured market economics but nevertheless understood the need for a social safety net for Israelis.

Likud had ceased to be capable of representing such an outlook. The Labour Party does not seem to be able to do so, either. Kadima is, thus, not a fan club but a force of political nature.

All of which means that Ehud Olmert, Mr Sharon’s protégé, deputy and today the acting Prime Minister, is a far better than average bet to be a permanent successor. Kadima might have needed Mr Sharon to start it; it does not, though, require him to maintain it. He may turn out to have been its Moses figure. If he had died or been removed earlier from political life, even in the first half of 2005, it may not have developed as it has.

The dilemma for Israel and the peace process is not that Mr Sharon cannot continue to serve as Prime Minister. It is that there is no equivalent to Mr Sharon in the Arab world. There is no one willing to acknowledge publicly that the Palestinians cannot have all that they might want, just as Israelis cannot have everything they might desire.

There is no one prepared to state what is absolutely obvious, namely that any return to the boundaries of 1967, let alone those of 1948, is a ludicrous notion. There is no one willing to declare openly that not only do those who surround Israel have to recognise its right to exist, but that their societies will thrive only when they begin to emulate the democratic values, economic ingenuity and cultural diversity that explain why Israel’s gross domestic product exceeds that of its vastly more populous neighbours combined.

For while the lessons of Mr Sharon’s life and contemporary Israeli history have been about change, the story of the wider region has been one of depressing continuity. Only Jordan under King Hussein and King Abdullah has had the imagination to break the mould, though the admirable Hashemite monarchy is constrained by extremely limited resources.

The rest have been unable to muster the moral and political strength to entertain the possibility of their equivalents of leaving Lebanon, discarding the Gaza Strip or of a partial retreat from the West Bank. There is instead a political culture in which ruling elites officially blame the existence of Israel for their national woes and oppositions damn both Israel and the ruling elites for their own difficulties. This is, in effect, the division between Fatah and Hamas that the parliamentary elections in the Palestinian Authority is brutally exposing.

De Gaulle transformed France in large part because the rest of Europe had been transformed by others. Mr Sharon has transformed Israel and been transformed by Israel. The tragedy of his end is not the event itself, it is the absence of events around it.

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