Yesterday’s debate on ABC’s “This Week” was headlined “Mid-East Peace Post Sharon?” In diplomatic corridors and other press discussions, the question was “So what does this mean for the peace process?”

Prime Minister Sharon came to represent the best hope for “international community” supporters of the “peace process” – even though in U.N. halls, where conflict resolution is revered, he was for decades called a “butcher” and a “war criminal.”

Back in September 2000, Mr. Sharon explained to me during a long phone conversation why he planned to visit the Temple Mount. Once he explained his plan, I knew – as did he – that it might be seen by the Israeli left as an unnecessary provocation. At the time, some still saw hope for a peace process that was long dead after the disastrous Barak-Arafat-Clinton Camp David summit.

The Temple Mount visit was used by Yasser Arafat to launch the terror campaign he called the second intifada. Israelis got tired of the futile negotiations and elected Mr. Sharon, who in turn would defeat terrorism militarily and redraw Israel’s border. But five years ago, the peace process negotiations had a different character.

“Can you step out and try to help me analyze this objectively, to see how others will see this idea?” I asked Mr. Sharon, who was always courteous and playful with reporters. “I can’t. I am not an objective bystander,” he said, returning again and again to his point that no Jew should ever be barred from visiting any area of Jerusalem, a point made for the world to see two days later.

The international framework for all Middle East peace processes is based on the often misunderstood November 1967 Security Council resolution 242, with the title Land for Peace. At the United Nations, concrete land concessions by Israel were considered more important than the elusive peace.

By contrast, Mr. Sharon’s philosophy was informed by the notion that facts Israelis create on the ground are much more significant than any international agreement or meaningless pacts. He was not an objective bystander. As long as Israel did what was right for itself, he believed, the rest would fall into place.

“It is the absolute recognition that it is the right path for the future of Israel that guided me,” Mr. Sharon said, explaining his Gaza move – in Hebrew – to the U.N. General Assembly in his September address. Portraying the lopsided nature of the two sides’ approaches to peacemaking, he said, “Our desire for peace is strong enough to ensure that we will achieve it only if our neighbors are genuine partners in this longed-for goal.”

While occasionally paying lip service to the term, Mr. Sharon’s every move was dedicated to demolishing myths surrounding the peace process. Never patient with the endless process to begin with, he knew that peace could not be achieved with the current Palestinian Arabs’ leadership and that nothing was more deadly than endless negotiations with it.

“I am Jewish, and this is the most important thing for me,” Mr. Sharon told a Japanese reporter last week in the last known press interview he gave be fore Wednesday’s stroke. The interview, vintage Sharon and an ode to the classic Zionism he had embodied, was reprinted on the Web site Y-net.

“I was willing to agree to painful compromises for a lasting peace. I made painful compromises,” he said, adding, however, he would never compromise on security for Israelis or on their right to resist those who attack them. “Israel is a tiny country, a country full of talented and brave people. It is the only place in the world where Jews can defend themselves.”

So what does the departure of this lion of Zionism now mean for Israel, and for the region? Back in the spring of 1963, that question seemed much more acute for Israelis, after David Ben-Gurion quit as prime minister for “personal reasons.” The feet of his prospective heir, Levi Eshkol, seemed too small to fill the shoes of the father of the country. Eshkol went on to preside over the 1967 Six-Day War victory that redrew the map of the Middle East.

“If we asked the prime minister, ‘Arik, what would you want us to do'”? his prospective heir, Ehud Olmert, reportedly said to Cabinet ministers yesterday. The answer, Mr. Olmert said, would be, “Continue to assure the security and the economy of Israel.”