Comatose Sharon looms large over vote
From his appearances in film clips on nightly television advertisements and his portrait in campaign posters, one might think that Ariel Sharon was still the Kadima Party's candidate for prime minister in Tuesday's national elections.
Lying comatose in Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital for the past three months, Mr Sharon in fact remains the most important figure in the race. It was he who set the election agenda, picked his replacement and created the political parameters within which the contest is being waged.
His bold decision to withdraw Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank last year exploded the status quo in which the Israeli-Palestinian dispute had been mired for almost four decades. In the decisive way he met the protesting settlers and their right-wing supporters who had intimidated previous governments, he turned the withdrawal from an episode into a landmark that signalled the ability of any government to carry out further pullbacks if it has the political will.
Mr Sharon made assertion of such political will more feasible by shattering the Likud Party, which he himself was instrumental in founding in 1973. The party had long been a hardline right-wing group whose leadership harboured visions of a Greater Israel extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. Mr Sharon shared that vision and was more instrumental than anyone else in perpetuating it by building scores of settlements in the West Bank in various ministerial roles before becoming prime minister.
Unlike most of his fellows in the Likud leadership, however, he was able eventually to grasp that the international community and the Palestinians themselves would never accommodate themselves to that vision. More importantly, neither would a substantial majority of Israelis - albeit, mostly a silent majority.
It was a radical change in world-view for a man already in his 70s. But the conclusions he drew were pressed home with the determination and skills of the legendary general he was in his 40s.
Strategically, he scored a major achievement when he obtained from President George W. Bush, in return for the Gaza evacuation, support for the retention by Israel of some settlement blocs in the West Bank. Tactically, he outmanoeuvred the Likud Knesset faction and the Likud Central Committee, which vigorously opposed the pullout.
When this in-house opposition threatened to block any further political initiatives he surprised again last October by quitting Likud and forming Kadima. It was a leap into the unknown, but his instincts proved sound. Polls quickly established that the public would give Kadima under Mr Sharon as many Knesset seats as it had given Likud under the former general.
Mr Sharon had sundered the political alignment in Israel and staked out the centre, between Likud and Labour. That is where most Israelis wanted to be. The majority was prepared to trade most of the territories captured in the 1967 Six-Day war for a political accommodation with the Palestinians, and the descent of Likud made that possible. Even many Arabs, for whom Mr Sharon had been the ultimate Israeli ogre, came to regard him with respect.
In abandoning Likud, he took with him most of the figures of substance from that party's leadership. He also caused most of the Likud's Sephardi adherents to leave the party, having joined largely for ethnic reasons. These voters have now switched to Kadima and other parties, opening Israeli politics to fresh winds.
Mr Sharon remains officially prime minister until his successor is sworn in.
When the election victor is announced on Tuesday night, the thoughts of the nation will rest, however briefly, with the still figure guarded by secret servicemen in Hadassah Hospital. He will not have cast a ballot but he will almost certainly have decided the results.
