Israel Holds Its Breath for Sharon

By Laura King

Jan. 6, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hovered between life and death Thursday, under heavy sedation and breathing with the aid of a respirator, as his doctors waited anxiously to assess the effects of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

Doctors may attempt today to bring the 77-year-old leader out of a medically induced coma, into which he was placed following nearly eight hours of intensive and delicate neurosurgery. Or they may wait up to three days to do so.

Only when Sharon is restored to consciousness, the doctors said, will the effects of the hemorrhagic stroke the Israeli leader suffered Wednesday evening become clear. Such strokes are often fatal.

Sharon has been a towering figure on the Israeli political landscape for decades, and his medical crisis plunged the country into a state of grief and anxiety. On desert army bases, in Tel Aviv beach cafes and before the giant yellow stones of the Western Wall, Israelis wept, commiserated and offered prayers for his recovery.

“The Last Battle,” said a banner headline in Israel’s largest daily newspaper, Yediot Aharonot.

In a powerful symbolic statement of Sharon’s sudden absence from public life, Israel’s Cabinet gathered for a solemn special session, pointedly leaving his chair empty.

“We are all praying and full of hope ... of seeing the prime minister, a veteran of so many battles, emerging from this one and taking his seat here,” said Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who formally assumed temporary stewardship of the government.

In reality, though, even the prime minister’s closest allies, many of them hollow-eyed and haggard after a long vigil at Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Medical Center, were quietly acknowledging that Sharon was extremely unlikely to return to power. Sharon was in the neurological intensive-care unit at the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, where he was transported after falling ill at his sheep ranch in the Negev desert.

Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the hospital’s director, who has served as a spokesman for the medical team, told reporters that the prime minister’s vital signs were stable and that he would remain deeply sedated to allow swelling in his brain to subside and clotting agents to take effect.

“Part of the treatment of the prime minister, in order to preserve low pressure in the skull, is sedation and respiration for at least the next 24 hours,” Mor-Yosef said at what has become a sprawling media encampment outside the hospital.

However, he added: “This treatment isn’t timed with a stopwatch; it’s a treatment that could last between 48 and 72 hours, depending on the condition of the prime minister.”

Many of Sharon’s closest aides, some of whom were old comrades in arms or friends of decades’ standing, maintained long vigils at the hospital. Sharon’s sons, Omri and Gilad, were at their father’s bedside, Israeli media reports said.

Even Sharon’s rivals spoke of him in elegiac terms, with some of the tributes taking on the incantatory quality of ancient Hebrew psalms.

“The people of Israel must pray for the recovery of Ariel, son of Vera, a man who gave his entire self to the state of Israel,” said Eli Yishai of the ultra-Orthodox Shas political party.

Sharon made bitter enemies of the Jewish settlers of the Gaza Strip when he evacuated their settlements less than five months ago, but some of them nonetheless said they wished him no ill.

“Our prime minister is fighting for his life, and this is a time for unity,” said Avi Farhan, a Gaza settler activist.

Some far-right leaders, though, said they had no sympathy. “I’m not praying for his recovery,” said one, Baruch Marzel. “I am too busy praying for all those he displaced and uprooted and whose lives he ruined.”

Regardless of whether Sharon recovers to any significant degree, Israel’s general elections will proceed as scheduled on March 28, said Atty. Gen. Menachem Mazuz. But the prime minister’s illness dimmed the previously bright prospects for Kadima, the centrist movement he created in November after abandoning his Likud Party.

Amid the tumult of events, questions persisted about the decision to transport Sharon to Jerusalem by ambulance on Wednesday evening rather than airlifting him there, or whisking him to Soroka hospital in the southern town of Beersheba, only a few miles from his ranch. The cerebral hemorrhage apparently occurred during the 90-minute drive to the Hadassah hospital, Dr. Shmuel Shapira, a member of Sharon’s medical team, told Israel’s Channel 10.

On arrival at the hospital, the prime minister was placed on a respirator, and emergency surgery began a short time later. At one point early Thursday, doctors broke off their work to perform a brain scan, which indicated the bleeding had not been halted, and they operated for several more hours until a further scan showed the hemorrhaging was finally under control.

In medical circles, there was also discussion about the effects of Sharon’s treatment with blood thinners after a minor stroke Dec. 18. The medication was meant to inhibit the formation of a clot such as the one that triggered the earlier stroke, but it also might have seriously hampered efforts Wednesday night to stop the bleeding in his brain, several outside experts said.

In part because Sharon always seemed so robust and unstoppable, it was a shock for Israelis to see him struck down.

Teachers were told by national education officials to encourage classroom discussion, and to let pupils air their emotions. In an indication of fears for the future, the Israeli shekel fell to a one-month low against the dollar and the stock market plunged nearly 6%.

“I was up all night surfing the Net for news” about Sharon, Tel Aviv businessman Avihu Aharon said.

Aharon said that even though he considered himself a right-winger, “I admire the man. He is one of the giants of his generation and has done so much for our country.”

Ora Davidoff, a senior citizen waiting at a Tel Aviv bus stop, said she found the turn of events “very painful.”

“It hasn’t left my mind all day,” she said distractedly. “Lately, Sharon has become everyone’s father. We counted on him so much -- that he would be the one to bring unity and stability.”

News of Sharon’s health also dominated discussion Thursday in Hebrew-language Internet chat rooms. On the Yediot Aharonot website, YNET, one posting offered up a particularly poignant wish for Sharon.

“Hang on, Lion King,” it read.

Times special correspondent Tami Zer in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.