ISRAEL: While Israel's ailing leader Ariel Sharon remained critically ill in hospital yesterday, the political establishment rallied to display an image of stability, and a stunned public attempted to come to terms with the abrupt departure of a veteran leader.
Mr Sharon (77) underwent a third bout of emergency surgery yesterday morning to relieve pressure inside his skull following a massive stroke and brain haemorrhage on Wednesday.
Surgeons at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital said a scan following yesterday's operation showed no active bleeding, although Mr Sharon was in a critical condition in a medically induced coma and on a respirator.
With reports that even if Mr Sharon survives he is likely to have sustained significant brain damage, all senior members of his brand new Kadima party rallied around his interim successor, Ehud Olmert (60), the man thought most likely to lead the party into parliamentary elections due on March 28th.
Mr Olmert yesterday met veteran former prime minister Shimon Peres to ensure his allegiance to Kadima, which he defected to recently in support of Mr Sharon, and after he was ousted as Labor Party leader.
Mr Sharon's departure from the political scene is a sudden test for the centre-right Kadima party, which he founded last November after dramatically quitting his rebellious right-wing Likud. Kadima must now prove it is built on a lasting policy base rather than just being an extension of Mr Sharon's dynamic and forceful personality.
The battle in next March's elections will be for Israel's centrist voters who have lost faith in the political left, which they see as naive. They are also tired of the intransigence of the right, which vehemently opposed Mr Sharon's recent evacuation of Jewish settlements in Gaza, and is against any future territorial concessions.
Mr Sharon attracted widespread support for his daring move to the centre with last summer's shutdown of Gaza settlements. This allowed him to turn over occupied land on Israel's terms, bypassing negotiations with Palestinian leaders, whom the Israeli public deeply mistrust.
To retain anything like the anticipated electoral strength that polls showed it had with Mr Sharon at its helm, Kadima will have to reassure voters that it can continue on this centrist path and make further unilateral moves towards the creation of Israel's borders with a future Palestinian entity, as Mr Sharon had planned.
"Mr Sharon has come to represent something that a very, very significant part of the Israeli people wants, getting rid of the occupied territories," said Dani Filc, a political scientist at Ben Gurion University.
"Because it's difficult to be a western country when you hold occupied territories, but doing it for self-interest and not from any recognition of the rights of Palestinians to self-determination.
"It combines wanting to get rid of the territories with the willingness to fight the Palestinians and break their bones."
Suddenly deprived of the stability and firmness offered by the soldier-politician who fought in every major war since the foundation of the Jewish state, Israelis were yesterday grappling with Mr Sharon's loss while being unable to properly mourn him.
"Here people don't cry while there is still some hope," said Gabby Fuchs, a real-estate agent from Jerusalem. "People feel uncertain and they won't mourn until they have the final news."
A generation of younger party leaders - Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Labor leader Amir Peretz and acting prime minister Ehud Olmert - will go to the polls next March in what remains an uncertain contest for domination of a fractured Knesset. A snap poll published yesterday showed that Kadima would emerge the strongest party in any future coalition government, even without Mr Sharon.
Mr Peretz said yesterday that his party had temporarily suspended election activities, while Mr Netanyahu, the normally outspoken hardline Likud leader who stands to profit from the absence of his arch-rival, also kept a low profile.
Foreign leaders continued to express concern for Mr Sharon's wellbeing, with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice praising him as "a man of enormous courage" and cancelling a scheduled trip to Indonesia and Australia amid uncertainty over his condition.