Ariel Sharon, the controversial self-styled "warrior" who dominated Israel's military and political landscape for decades, has died eight years after a massive stroke left him in a vegetative state.
The former army general and prime minister suffered multiple organ failure over the new year. His sons were at his bedside at the Sheba Medical Centre, a long-term care facility near Tel Aviv, where Sharon has lain since May 2006.
Television networks interrupted their scheduled coverage to break the news. But Sharon's death, at the age of 85 and after eight years in a coma, was less of a shock to Israel than the devastating stroke that felled him on 4 January 2006 at the height of his premiership.
Even so, for many Israelis he will be mourned as a giant figure who played a key role in shaping Israel both as a soldier and a statesman. His passing severs the last link to the iconic generation which fought in the 1948 war that followed the declaration of the state. His reputation as a fearless – and controversial - soldier was matched by his uncompromising ideology as a politician.
Among Palestinians and leftwing Israelis, he will be remembered as a powerful and reviled champion of Israel's colonial settlement project, and the political force behind the construction of the vast concrete and steel separation barrier that snakes through the West Bank. Many will not forgive his role in the killing of hundreds of Palestinians in refugee camps in Beirut in the 1980s.............................http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/11/former-israeli-pm-ariel-sharon-dies
11/1/13
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