Sharon starts to fade from the front page
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-01-18 09:28

Ariel Sharon left the political stage with a bang, but a sense of quiet acceptance has settled over Israel as the 77-year-old leader lies comatose in a Jerusalem hospital.

Two weeks after he was felled by a massive stroke, updates on the prime minister's condition are taking second or third billing in Israeli media to reports on Jewish settler unrest in the West Bank city of Hebron or regional cases of bird flu.

Almost no one in Israel expects the former general, a dominating force in the Middle East for decades, to return to office.

The political focus has shifted to Ehud Olmert, the career politician who replaced him, as Israel moves toward a March 28 general election.

"We can't just rest our hopes on one man, much as I admire him," Yaakov Sheetrit, a Jerusalem shopkeeper, said about Sharon. "I want someone to preserve what he built."

Sharon staked a claim to Israel's political center by withdrawing settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip last September and forming a new party, Kadima, after bolting the right-wing Likud.

Many Israelis saw Sharon as a strong leader who could make the bold decisions needed to end conflict with the Palestinians.

He leaves behind a party system in flux, after leadership changes in the Likud and center-left Labor, and a mostly untested generation of politicians trying to fill his shoes.

Olmert, a former two-term mayor of Jerusalem, has received high marks in Israeli opinion polls for a smooth transfer of power. The surveys show Kadima, with Olmert at its helm, on course to win the national ballot.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

Israel's stock and foreign currency markets trade independently of news on Sharon, gaining strength in their last few sessions on the back of a local economic recovery.

Israeli satirists are again poking fun at politicians now that the initial shock of Sharon's stroke has worn off. The popular "Eretz Nehederet" television show aired its first spoof of Olmert last Friday.

In one skit, an Olmert impersonator was asked whether he thought politicians were cynically abusing Sharon's condition for personal gain.

"I think that I am interested in taking a stick and checking to see how your left side reacts to pain," the "Olmert" character responded, referring to neurological tests conducted on Sharon to see if he would come out of his coma.

Gideon Rahat, a political science lecturer at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said the return to business as usual indicated the strength of Israeli democracy.

"Every man has his replacement, even a charismatic leader who was accepted by a wide segment of society," Rahat said.

Olmert, 60, cuts a vastly different figure from "bulldozer" Sharon, who led troops in Israel's early wars and orchestrated a 1982 invasion of Lebanon to battle Palestinian fighters.

Dressed in signature gray suits, Olmert frequently appeared on foreign news programs as an aggressive spokesman for Israeli policies. But he was never widely seen in Israel as prime ministerial material.

"He could easily begin to annoy people," said Rahat. "He is impatient and not easygoing."

Kadima members acknowledge it could be Sharon's public popularity, evoking a sympathy vote, that might propel Olmert to victory in the upcoming election.

"If this sudden stroke had happened before the party was formed, it wouldn't receive such support," Meir Sheetrit, a cabinet minister and a Kadima member, told Reuters.

Sharon's continued incapacitation and possible death are not likely to shake Israeli society to the same extent as the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish gunman opposed to peace moves with the Palestinians.

"It's sad because everyone expected Sharon would be reelected," said Adi, a soldier who would not give her last name. "But it's clear that after a stroke he won't return to normal. You don't have to be a big-name doctor to know that."