JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's inevitable departure from the political stage is sure to have major repercussions in Israel, where the party he founded was reshaping the political landscape, and the broader Middle East - in keeping with his nickname, "The Bulldozer."

He was fighting for his life on Friday after a seven-hour operation to stop the bleeding in his brain caused by a massive stroke.

One of the dominant figures in a region rich in powerful personalities, the 77-year-old leader shrugged off a mild stroke last month and ploughed back into a punishing public schedule.

But on the eve of a minor operation to repair a hole in his heart, he was rushed by ambulance from his southern Israel ranch to a Jerusalem hospital for emergency surgery for a haemorrhagic stroke the bursting of a blood vessel in the brain.

Sharon, a former general who has long seemed invincible to his countrymen, has been prime minister since 2001, guiding Israel through a five-year Palestinian uprising.

Opinion polls after last month's stroke showed he was still the clear favourite to win a March election as head of his new centrist Kadima Party after quitting the rightist Likud.

Political analysts said no figure had dominated Israel to the same extent as Sharon since founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. "The moment he goes, everything will change," said political scientist Shmuel Sandler of Bar-Ilan University.

Israeli commentators were quick to point out that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Sharon's long-time arch-foe, was two years his junior when he died in a Paris hospital in 2004 just weeks after falling sick.

Sharon has had to endure one of the most pressure-filled years of his long career. There were already signs it was taking its toll, and the bulky prime minister sometimes looked drawn.

Gaza withdrawal

The source of much of the upheaval was the Gaza withdrawal Sharon engineered last year despite fierce opposition from hardliners within his own Likud Party. It was Israel's first removal of settlements on land Palestinians want for a state.

Once the pullout was complete, Sharon opted to break away from Likud to form the Kadima Party, saying he no longer wanted his hands tied in pursuing his diplomatic strategy for ending conflict with the Palestinians.

Not long ago, the notion that the one-time champion of Israel's settlements would tear down part of his own project was unthinkable.

But it was a typically bold move by Sharon, who as an army commander had a legendary record for battlefield victories but also for defying the military top brass.

Sharon drew Arab enmity for masterminding the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, during which Christian militia allies massacred Palestinians in two refugee camps, and later for his crushing response to a Palestinian uprising that erupted after he visited a sensitive Jerusalem shrine in 2000.

His decision to build a lengthy barrier on occupied West Bank land to stop suicide bombers from entering Israel was another controversial move, drawing rare criticism from the United States and deepening the hostility of Palestinians cut off from their land and livelihood.

But Sharon also won international accolades for ending 38 years of Israeli military rule in Gaza, though he vowed never to relinquish much larger settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Source: China Daily