Four years on, Sharon's legacy wanes in Israel

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TEL AVIV — On Monday, former prime minister Ariel Sharon will have been in a coma for four years. With peace hopes bogged down, Israel today is a far cry from what it was when he suffered a massive stroke.

A steely general nicknamed "the bulldozer," the now 81-year-old left a leadership vacuum that many feel has yet to be filled when he slipped into unconsciousness on January 4, 2006.

And with Middle East peace efforts currently stalled, ties with Washington strained and concerns rising over the growing influence of arch-foe Iran, Israel faces crucial decisions in the coming years.

Now connected to a feeding tube and showing very low brain activity, Sharon built a powerful and controversial legacy that culminated four months before the stroke that felled him, when he ordered Jewish settlers and soldiers to pull out of the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i42GsvIEHKhdlzjObT28_rhMP_lQ

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1. If Ariel Sharon Woke Up Today

Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of Ariel Sharon's coma. People I know who've been in to see him say he looks more-or-less the same, and breathes without a respirator. His family and friends hope he wakes up, according to this report, but it does seem unlikely. But imagine if he did come back. Would he understand that the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was a terrible mistake? Not the withdrawal, of course, but its unilateral nature. Imagine that he came back and embraced the idea that there is a Palestinian partner with whom Israel can negotiate, that Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, are not like Yasser Arafat, that Israel could do real business with these men. What a seismic effect this could have on Israeli politics and on the current prime minister. Okay, I'm a dreaming. But why not dream?

http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2010/01/if_ariel_sharon_woke_up_today.php

[Don Caballero]

2. How I pray that Rabin was never assassinated by that lone nut

He was the catalyst for change in Israel.