It could take a week before doctors treating Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, placed in a deep coma after suffering a massive brain haemorrhage, can assess whether he has suffered permanent damage, head surgeon Felix Umansky said on Thursday.
Questioned by telephone by Spanish radio station Cadena Ser on the chances of Sharon recovering his mental health sufficiently to resume political life, the leader of the team treating the prime minister said: ”It is difficult today to give an assessment.”
”I think that next week, by the middle or the end of the week, we will have a clearer view,” said the Argentinian surgeon who also practises at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital.
The 77-year-old Sharon was placed in a deep coma after undergoing seven hours of surgery before doctors were able to halt bleeding in his brain, but remains in a critical condition.
”He is under sedatives. He is going to continue to receive this type of treatment for three or four days and then, if things go well, we are going to start to reduce the treatment and see what the situation is from the neurological point of view,” Umansky said.
End of an era
Meanwhile, reports Jeff Abramowitz in Tel Aviv, Israel, irrespective of how — or whether — he recovers from the haemorrhage he suffered, the era of Ariel Sharon in Israel and the region is over, analysts pointed out on Thursday.
As Israelis came to terms with doctors’ prognosis that Sharon would be unlikely to recover without incapacitation, the question of life without him at the helm became a reality.
For Israelis, whatever their political beliefs, the 77-year-old premier was a massive presence who had always been there, one of the last of the country’s founding sons — the young men who fought for the creation of Israel in 1948/49 and then went on to eminent careers in the military or in politics or, in Sharon’s case, both.
The country, columnist Yair Lapid said on Thursday, ”is waking up this morning to an entirely new ballgame … Sharon was the only person who carried on his back dramatic, far-reaching policy decisions that are not subordinate to an artificial national consensus”.
”A large majority of people in Israel, including his most vehement opponents, knew there was someone they could count on … that any catastrophe could occur, the country was led by someone who was capable of dealing with it,” agreed Sima Kadmon, an analyst for the Yediot Ahronot daily.
Leading Kadima
Polls showed that Sharon was a shoo-in to lead his new centrist Kadima faction to victory in Israel’s upcoming March 28 elections.
The question on Thursday was whether the new party, which as yet has neither grass-roots organisation nor firm party institutions, would do as well without Sharon at the helm.
A recent poll showed that even without Sharon Kadima could still emerge as the largest party after the election, depending on who leads it.
But that survey posed what was at the time a hypothetical question, a question whose answer may not translate into the new reality.
Acting Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert, who is also one of the candidates to take over the Kadima leadership, is an experienced politician, whose views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict echo Sharon’s.
But he is far from popular with the Israeli electorate and lacks Sharon’s flair — not always successful — for thinking in what one commentator described as ”outside the box”.
Challengers
Kadima’s two main challengers in the election are the Likud, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Labour Party, headed by Amir Perez.
Netanyahu, a former Israeli premier whose 1996-1999 term in office was controversial, is an Israeli hard-liner who opposed Sharon’s recent diplomatic moves and in fact resigned from the Cabinet to protest the decision to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Although as premier Netanyahu signed agreements with the Palestinians, he also froze them in retaliation for what he said was Palestinian Authority non-compliance.
The dovish Perez, on the other hand, has never held any Cabinet position. A former firebrand trade-union leader, he is concentrating his campaign on socio-economic issues and these may dominate policies should he win the election.
While he has also spoken out in favour of moving directly toward final status negotiations, many Israelis believe he lacks the authority to push through major, irreversible peace moves with the Palestinians.
Peace process
Whoever takes over as new Israeli premier after the elections, the peace process with the Palestinians will in the long run, and for better or for worse, be far different to what it was under Sharon, a point not lost on Palestinians who had no love for him.
”In the long term, Sharon’s absence will be better for the Palestinians,” Palestinian analyst and columnist Hani Masri said.
”Sharon was a strong person and had very strong Israeli and international backing for his policies. He could do whatever he wanted without any criticism or objection. This brought serious dangers to the future of the Palestinians,” he said.
”In the long term, it will be better for the Palestinians because Israel will not have the strong leader it just lost,” he added.
In the short term, however, Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians may not change. Olmert — acting premier at least until the elections if, as predicted, Sharon does not recover — will likely continue his political patron’s policies, with all that entails.
At the same time, if he is chosen to head Kadima, he will also be busy with his election campaign, which, because of Sharon’s illness, has now been thrown wide open.
”When the current election campaign period began, the assumption was that this would be a fascinating election campaign, one of the more dramatic that the State of Israel has ever known,” respected analyst Nahum Barnea wrote on Thursday in Yediot Ahronot.
”That assumption was proven correct,” he continued. ”But it wasn’t the type of drama that we yearned for.” — Sapa-AFP, Sapa-DPA