VARIOUS FILE: Comatose former Israeli PM Sharon transfered from hospital to his home

Record ID: 721432

  • Title: VARIOUS FILE: Comatose former Israeli PM Sharon transfered from hospital to his home
  • Date: 13th November 2010
  • Summary: BEIRUT, LEBANON (FILE - SEPTEMBER 1982) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TANKS MAKING WAY TO BEIRUT DURING ISRAEL-LEBANON WAR SABRAH AND SHATILAH, BEIRUT, LEBANON (FILE - SEPTEMBER 1982) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF DESTRUCTION CAUSED TO REFUGEE CAMPS AFTER A THREE DAY MASSACRE BY ISRAELI-BACKED CHRISTIAN MILITIA IN SEPTEMBER 1982 ISRAELI DEFENCE MINISTER ARIEL SHARON LOOKING AT THE DEVASTATION
  • Embargoed: 28th November 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA7VGND5FQPWF1YQVM0P4X35365
  • Story Text: Israel's comatose former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was moved back to his desert ranch on Friday (November 12) leaving the secure hospital ward that had been his home for almost five years, officials said.
    Eighty-two-year-old Sharon will continue to receive treatment at Sycamore Farm, where as premier he would often retreat with aides to plan strategies such as Israel's 2002 offensive in the Palestinian West Bank and the surprise 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
    Felled by a massive stroke in January 2006, ex-general Sharon left an often jittery Jewish state that has fought two wars while charting an uncertain course in U.S.-sponsored peace talks with the Palestinians.
    After being stabilised for brain hemorrhage, Sharon settled into what medical staff and the few friends allowed to visit describe as a limbo state -- uncommunicative but apparently responding to basic stimuli like television.
    He is said to have kept much of the fat that made him a favourite of satires and gave girth to his nickname "bulldozer".
    As Israeli defence minister in 1982, Sharon masterminded the Lebanon invasion and was forced to step down over the massacre there of Palestinian refugees by allied Christian militiamen.
    But while many Arabs reviled him for his war record, Sharon won respect as prime minister for ploughing through Israel's fractious coalition politics to form the new, centrist Kadima party and pull out of Gaza.
    Whether Sharon, who at one point boxed in former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with tanks, would have secured a peace accord remains debated, not least as Hamas Islamists opposed to coexistence with Israel were quick to fill the Gaza vacuum.
    The corruption- and infighting-riddled Likud party that Sharon abandoned has rebounded, its rightist Benjamin Netanyahu serving as premier astride a mostly stable coalition today.
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