Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was rushed back to surgery on Friday after a brain scan revealed a rise in pressure on his brain and more internal bleeding, doctors said.

Sharon's blood pressure also rose and one of his brain lobes expanded slightly, said Dr Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the director of Hadassah Hospital, where Sharon is being treated. Sharon's aides rushed to the hospital to be with him during the surgery, his second in two days.

"It was decided to bring the prime minister to the operating room in order to deal with these two issues, to drain the bleeding and to decrease the intracranial pressure," he said.

Shimon Peres, Israel's elder statesman and a Sharon ally, said he was "very worried."

In fact, Sharon's political career was already at an end as he remained on life support after hours of surgery to stop "massive and widespread" bleeding in his brain.

Political leaders publicly offered statements of support for Sharon, but there was a growing acceptance that, even if he survived, the 77-year-old former general would not return to office. Doctors said he would struggle to recover from the stroke.

His deputy, Ehud Olmert, convened an emergency cabinet meeting as acting prime minister and said that the general election scheduled for March, which Sharon had been expected to win, would go ahead.

But it was far from clear who would emerge as Israel's next leader and whether the crisis would give fresh momentum to the attempt to end conflict with the Palestinians or curtail the opportunities offered by Sharon's "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip last year.

Small numbers of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square under a banner wishing Sharon a speedy recovery. Religious Jews held a special prayer session at Jerusalem's Western Wall.

But a small group of Jewish right-wing extremists in Hebron held a party to celebrate Sharon's illness on the grounds he had "hurt the land of Israel" by removing settlers from the Gaza Strip.

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange fell by about 5 per cent, and discussions were initiated about suspending trading if the fall in share prices were to continue. The shekel also fell against other currencies.

'A man who could be counted on'

The country, columnist Yair Lapid said on Thursday, "is waking up this morning to an entirely new ballgame ... Sharon was the only person who carried on his back dramatic, far-reaching policy decisions that are not subordinate to an artificial national consensus."

Sima Kadmon, an analyst for the Yediot Ahronot daily, agreed: "A large majority of people in Israel, including his most vehement opponents, knew there was someone they could count on ... that if any catastrophe should occur, the country was led by someone who was capable of dealing with it."

Polls showed that Sharon was a shoo-in to lead his new centrist Kadima faction to victory in Israel's March 28 elections.

A recent poll showed that even without Sharon, Kadima could still emerge as the largest party after the election, depending on who leads it.

Olmert, who is also one of the candidates to take over the Kadima leadership, is an experienced politician whose views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict echo Sharon's.

Kadima's two main challengers in the election are the Likud, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Labour Party, headed by Amir Perez.

Whoever takes over as new Israeli premier after the elections, the peace process with the Palestinians will, for better or for worse, be far different from what it was under Sharon, a point not lost on Palestinians, who had no love for him.

In the short term, however, Israel's policies towards the Palestinians may not change. Olmert, acting premier at least until the elections if, as predicted, Sharon does not recover, will probably continue his political patron's policies, with all that entails.

Source: China Daily