The medical condition of the
comatose Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of
Israel, has sharply deteriorated, the hospital treating him said.
The 85-year-old Sharon, who is at
the Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv, was suffering on Wednesday from
"serious kidney problems" after undergoing surgery, according to the
reports.
A hospital spokesman said that
there had been a deterioration in Sharon's condition in the past few days.
Sharon had a stroke on January 4,
2006, slipping into a coma from which he has never recovered.
He has been getting medical care and
receiving fluids through a feeding tube.
Last September, Sharon underwent
abdominal surgery to correct a problem in his intravenous feeding system.
The operation, which lasted an hour,
was planned several months beforehand.
Israeli and US specialists said in
January 2013 that Sharon had shown "significant brain activity" in an
MRI scan, responding to pictures of his family seven years after the stroke.
In 1983, an Israeli investigative
commission concluded that Israeli leaders were “indirectly responsible” for the
killings at the Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, in Lebanon, and
that Sharon, who was defence minister at the time, bore “personal
responsibility” for failing to prevent them.
Sharon later found popularity as
prime minister from 2001 to 2006. He led Israel's military response to the
Palestinian uprising known as the second intifada, all but ending it by 2004.
The next year, he reversed his years
of pro-settlement policies and pulled all of Israel's soldiers and settlers out
of the Gaza Strip.
That same year he left the Likud
Party, which he helped found, and formed the centrist Kadima, a party designed
to be centred largely on his own personality.
But only months later, at the age of
77 and considerably overweight, Sharon suffered a series of strokes that left
him comatose.
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