Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was expected to leave hospital on Tuesday after making a full recovery from a stroke on Sunday night as Binyamin Netanyahu, his chief rival, won control of the Likud party.
Doctors said there was no lasting damage to Sharon after a small blood clot formed near his heart and made its way to his brain. The clot was dissolved and doctors said that, contrary to initial reports, he never lost consciousness.
According to exit polls, Netanyahu won 47% of the vote in the Likud primaries, which were called to select a successor to Sharon, who left the party to set up a new party, Kadima, last month.
Netanyahu and Sharon were uneasy allies in the Likud-led government until Netanyahu, who was finance minister, resigned in protest at the prime minister’s plan to withdraw from the settlements in the Gaza Strip in August.
Tamir Ben Hur, a neurologist at the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem where Sharon spent Monday undergoing tests and resting, said the prime minister was being treated with anti-coagulants. ”I can say confidently that the stroke will leave no damage or residual effects. I would say chances are excellent that he won’t have another one,” he said.
The shekel and Tel Aviv stocks fell in early trading on Monday in response to the news, but rallied as it became clear that Sharon’s condition was improving.
Analysts said it was too early to gauge the effect of the prime minister’s health on Israeli politics, as 138 000 members of the Likud party had the opportunity to choose between Netanyahu and three other candidates to become its chairman.
Only 40% of Likud members voted, with 32% preferring Netanyahu over Silvan Shalom, the foreign minister. Netanyahu now has just over one week to create a government that could hold off elections for another year. It is unlikely that he will be able to persuade 61 (out of 120) members of the Knesset to support him and the elections will be held as scheduled on March 28.
Israeli commentators said that the country had received a rude reminder of Sharon’s importance, not just to his new party, but to the nation. Nahum Barnea, in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, said Sharon was regarded by Israelis of all political persuasions as ”the conclusive authority on security matters”.
Sharon’s new party quickly became the strongest, according to opinion polls, but most people think that without the prime minister, it has no appeal. ”Without the prime minister, Kadima is not worth the paper upon which it is registered,” wrote one columnist. However, Mina Tzemach, the director of the Dahaf Polling Institute in Tel Aviv said that even without Sharon, Kadima would have a chance of survival, as half of its supporters told pollsters that they chose the party because it was the most centrist.
Sharon will be 78 in February and is very overweight. According to Ben Caspit, a columnist in the daily newspaper Ma’ariv, at a small party on Saturday the prime minister ate kebab, steak in chimichurri sauce, lamb ribs, salads (such as hummus), chocolate cake and other cakes. It was ”a typical Sharon menu”, Caspit wrote.
Sharon is expected to try to return to normal political life as quickly as possible in the hope that the Israeli public forgets about the stroke. Commentators suggested that he would be forced to campaign more actively to demonstrate that he remains physically and mentally robust. ”He could do a few photo opportunities, but we all know he can’t move very much. That would play into the hands of his political opponents,” said Professor Gadi Wolfsfeld, a political scientist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. – Guardian Unlimited Â