Troubled Soil

Ariel Sharon needed rest. After spending last Wednesday morning in meetings with ministers and security officials at his Jerusalem office, the Israeli Prime Minister decided to go home early. He was due to undergo a heart catheterization the next morning—ordinarily a routine procedure but hardly an appealing prospect for a 77-year-old man recovering from a stroke suffered just a few weeks before. Sharon was driven 56 miles south to his family home, Sycamore Ranch, in the western Negev desert. Friends who talked to him reported that he was in low spirits. At about 9 p.m. he spoke by phone with Israel's Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz. They discussed how to respond to Palestinians' firing of Qassam rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

It was his final call. Soon after he hung up, Sharon complained of an excruciating headache. Aides called secret-service paramedics, permanently on duty at the farm and contacted Sharon's personal physician, Dr. Shlomo Segev.

According to one of the Prime Minister's aides, the medical personnel discussed whether to fly him to Jerusalem by helicopter but decided it would be too rough a ride, instead opting to transport him by ambulance to Hadassah hospital. He was still conscious when his convey arrived in Jerusalem 48 min. later, but his condition soon deteriorated. An MRI scan revealed a serious brain hemorrhage. Sharon underwent a two-stage operation that lasted more than eight hours. After another surgery on Friday morning, Sharon was in a medically induced coma and attached to a respirator. "Sharon won't come back to be a decision-making person," Moty Ravid, professor of medicine at Tel Aviv University, said on Friday. "His chances of functioning at these levels are close to zero."

Since his election as Prime Minister four years ago, Sharon has towered over Israeli politics, shaping it to his will. But while he fought for his life last week, many Israelis had already resigned themselves to the loss of their legendary leader. Unsurprisingly, Sharon displayed a stubborn fortitude, hanging on for days after suffering the initial hemorrhage, even showing signs of improvement late last week. But the prognoses from medical experts indicated that he would never return to the tan leather chair at the center of the Cabinet table. And so the country began the wrenching process of moving on. Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert inherited Sharon's duties and his suffocating security retinue: a convoy of armored cars reserved for the use of the incapacitated Prime Minister has already been transferred to the new one.