Israeli PM Ariel Sharon speaks during the weekly meeting of his Kadima Party at the Knesset in Jerusalem, Dec. 12, 2005. (AP File Photo)
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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: February 27, 2006 |
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Ariel Sharon turned 78 on Sunday, but it's likely he didn't know.
The Israeli prime minister has been in a coma since suffering a massive stroke on Jan. 4, and with each passing day, doctors say, his chances of regaining consciousness diminish.
With Sharon confined to the intensive care unity of Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital, the Israeli election campaign he hoped to dominate proceeds without him, while his old friends and colleagues regret the fact that he isn't able to lead.
His two sons and senior aides visited his hospital room on Sunday. Hospital officials said Sharon's condition remains serious but stable.
"A sad birthday," read a headline across the bottom of the front page of the Yediot Ahronot daily.
Sharon was by far Israel's most popular politician when he was stricken, though he had just carried out one of the most tempestuous policies in the nation's history - pulling out of Gaza and part of the West Bank destroying 25 Jewish settlements.
Reacting to opposition within his own Likud Party, Sharon bolted and formed a new one called Kadima, combining other refugees from the Likud parliamentary faction and a few from the moderate Labor with academics and mayors. Kadima immediately leaped to the top of public opinion surveys, and Sharon was poised to win his third election as prime minister when the stroke felled him.
Sharon's closest political ally, Ehud Olmert, moved almost seamlessly into Sharon's post, becoming acting prime minister and Kadima's candidate for premier in the March 28 election. The poll numbers have held, and neither Sharon's stroke nor the victory of the militant Islamic Hamas have significantly reduced Kadima's lead.
Olmert opened Sunday's Cabinet meeting with a birthday wish. "Today is the birthday of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. We all pray for his health and wish for his speedy recovery," Olmert said.
Sharon has had seven operations, including three brain surgeries in the hours and days that immediately followed his massive brain hemorrhage. In the most serious operation in recent weeks, doctors removed part of his colon that had become necrotic. The other surgeries had to do with inserting and replacing breathing and feeding tubes. In the most recent procedure, last Wednesday, doctors drained fluid from his abdominal cavity.
Raanan Gissin, a longtime Sharon adviser, said the prime minister is still on the minds of Israelis. He said people constantly stop him on the street to ask when the prime minister will wake up. Israelis are lacking "that feeling of stability that now is no longer in our daily life. We don't have it anymore and we're missing it very much," he said.
The mood at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital was somber. A few well-wishers bringing flowers to Sharon, who has undergone seven operations - including three brain surgeries - since the stroke.
"We don't celebrate. We come, we meet with other people who share the same experience and I'd say we just pray that he will wake up," Gissin said.
"Maybe this 78th birthday is a good opportunity to get up and see what's happening and take the necessary steps that we're all wishing for him to take," he added. |
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