Given the many mistakes (to be charitable) that Ariel Sharon made in his career, I don't think his passing should go without mention of two Nixon-to-China moments. And I don't mean evacuating Gaza.
When Sharon was forming his government, the Israeli Arab-dominated political parties reported that he was the first presumptive prime minister to invite them to discuss the Government program. Of course, the program wasn't acceptable to them and they sat in opposition—but the Labour governments wanted to insulate themselves from soft-on-Arab charges so much, they never extended this courtesy.
Second, I don't know if the decision was ever implemented (I was gone from Israel shortly afterwards), but his Administration was the first to propose that internal identity cards (the teudat z'hut) no longer say "Arab" (or "Jew"). You can imagine how upset Official American Jewish Organizations are when Jews must carry endorsed identity documents in other countries, but they had nothing to say when the shoe was on the other foot.
What would have happened if he had eaten more moderately should become a staple of counterfactual history. He couldn't have been much worse than Bibi, after all.