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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."
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