The Middle East will be ”a better place” without ailing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas said on Thursday.
”The region will be a better place without Sharon. The world is on the verge of being rid of one of its worst leaders,” chief Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri told Agence France Presse.
”Sharon’s fate is divine intervention reserved for despots and evil-doers.”
Israel was thrown into political crisis on Wednesday night after the 77-year-old was rushed to hospital in Jerusalem after saying he felt unwell at his ranch in the Negev desert. A spokesperson said the stroke developed during the hour-long ambulance journey.
Sharon then underwent seven hours of surgery before doctors were able to halt bleeding in his brain but the prime minister remained in a critical condition.
Lebanese newspapers warned that Israel faced a period of political turmoil in the event that Sharon is incapacitated.
The two main Arab satellite channels, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, offered non-stop coverage of Sharon’s massive cerebral haemorrhage.
Analysts were also interviewed on both the Qatar and Dubai-based stations to offer their opinions and predictions should Sharon be unable to resume his duties as Israeli leader.
News of Sharon’s stroke broke too late on Wednesday night for many newspapers, which from Cairo to Damascus to Riyadh ran simple news reports of Sharon’s hospitalisation.
The Palestinian newspaper al-Quds, published in occupied east Jerusalem, ran the banner headline: ”Sharon fights death,” and the al-Ayyam in Ramallah announced: ”Sharon in a complete coma.”
Lebanon’s as-Safir newspaper was one of few newspapers in the region to comment on the massive stroke.
”Sharon is at death’s door and Israel is on the brink of political strife,” said as-Safir‘s five-column headline.
It said in a front-page commentary that Sharon’s new party Kadima was still ”a one-man party, without a structured policy or internal rules, with incomplete electoral lists and candidates linked to each other only through their ties [with Sharon]”.
”The absence of Sharon will first and foremost lead to internal conflicts about the party hierarchy and its efforts to convince Israelis before the election that the party is like the others it wants to defeat.”
”Sharon’s coma shuffles the political cards in Israel and the region,” added the country’s top-selling an-Nahar newspaper.
In Iran, state television reported without comment Sharon’s surgery, his deteriorating condition and the fact he needed a second operation, citing foreign media.
Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has triggered an international outcry with a series of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish comments, including calling for Israel to be ”wiped off the map”.
‘The Bulldozer’
Sharon is a towering figure known as ”the Bulldozer” who transformed himself from a former general and hawkish politician into a man regarded as a peacemaker.
The powers of the premier, who is seeking re-election at a general election scheduled for March 28 at the head of a new centrist party, has been transferred to Finance Minister Ehud Olmert.
Despite concerns about his health, particularly his weight, Sharon has maintained the kind of punishing work schedule that would have exhausted a man half his age.
Although the burly premier has cut down on his foreign travels in recent years, he has continued to lead from the front during some of the most far-reaching changes in Israeli history.
In November, the domineering Sharon announced he was leaving the right-wing Likud party that he was instrumental in forming in 1973 and setting up his new party, Kadima.
The decision came as a result of his frustration at having to battle hardliners within Likud who refused to forgive him for pulling settlers and troops out of the Gaza Strip over the summer.
His abandonment of Likud was seen as the ultimate political gamble for the man once reviled for masterminding Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon and now lauded for withdrawing troops and settlers from Gaza.
Over the years, the prime minister has shown himself an artful politician, trading in his image of hardline to one of moderate, with United States President George Bush and even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak describing him as a man of peace.
Polls have since indicated that Kadima was likely to emerge as the largest party after the election, pushing the Likud rump into third place at best.
Kadima is completely dominated by Sharon and were the prime minister unable to continue in politics, its future would be severely in doubt.
Few if any of Israel’s prime ministers have left such a mark on both the military and political landscape as Sharon over the last half a century.
Sharon has long courted controversy in an extraordinary career.
When he was elected prime minister in 2001 after a controversial visit to a disputed holy site in Jerusalem sparked the Palestinian intifada, his incoming administration was seen as the most hawkish in the history of the Jewish state.
Less than four years later, Sharon oversaw what none of his predecessors from either end of the political spectrum ever achieved — withdrawing settlers and soldiers from Palestinian territory.
Branded a dictator and traitor by former allies, the former darling of Israel’s right-wing ran roughshod over an avalanche of criticism over his Gaza pull-out, turning his international and domestic reputation on its head.
Born in British-mandate Palestine in February 1928, the prime minister began his military career at the age of 17 and first came to prominence on the battlefield in Israel’s wars against Arab states such as Egypt.
As defence minister, he masterminded the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and siege of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation headquarters in Beirut.
The following year, he was forced out in disgrace after being held ”indirectly responsible” for the massacres at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon perpetrated by his Christian Phalangist allies.
Despite the commission’s recommendation that Sharon was unfit for public office, he slowly rebuilt his reputation before becoming leader in 2000 of Likud, the party he helped develop, and rising to the pinnacle of government.
Various investigations of corruption charges, either levelled against him or his son Omri have failed to tarnish his highest-ever public approval ratings as he continues to ride the tide of the Gaza pull-out.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday sent her best wishes to Sharon.
”My thoughts are with Ariel Sharon and his family at this time,” Merkel said.
”With all my heart, I wish you a rapid recovery.”
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he was praying for a miracle Sharon.
”I don’t want to speculate about the consequences,” Straw said during a visit to Beirut.
”Sharon is very ill and remains the prime minister. We hope and pray that he recovers… We hope and pray for that miracle.”
Straw said Sharon had won ”huge respect across the world” as prime minister, particularly his decision to pull-out of the occupied Gaza Strip.
”Israel is a resilient and strong democracy. My view is that whoever is running Israel will be able to take his policy forward.” – Sapa-AFP