Ariel Sharon

The stony hills of the West Bank are dotted and crossed with Jewish settlements, asphalt roads connecting them and billboards advertising real estate deals: "A quarter-acre and a house for under $90,000!" This is the land that Ariel Sharon claimed for Israel. As father of the settler movement, he encouraged tens of thousands of Jews to move into the remote hilltop outposts and well-manicured towns that the government built for them.

The Sept. 11 attacks were only three weeks past when one of America's key allies threw relations into turmoil by comparing President Bush to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister famous for his appeasement policy with Nazi Germany. Denouncing Bush's plan to strengthen ties with Muslim nations to help fight terrorism, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned the United States, "Do not try to placate the Arabs at our expense."

They have called him "the Butcher" and seldom mention his name without listing the places where he has been blamed for bloodshed: Sabra, Shatila, Jenin. During long decades of Middle East strife, few men have been more thoroughly reviled in the Arab world than Ariel Sharon.

In an ominous development, critically ill Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was rushed Friday into his third round of surgery in two days to stem new bleeding in his brain. Doctors said they managed to halt the bleeding, and also took measures to relieve pressure that had built up in Sharon's skull in the wake of the massive cerebral hemorrhage he suffered Wednesday night. After the five-hour operation, Hadassah University Medical Center director Dr.

AS ARIEL SHARON'S career comes to an end, the whitewashing is already underway. Literally overnight he was being hailed as "a man of courage and peace" who had generated "hopes for a far-reaching accord" with an electoral campaign promising "to end conflict with the Palestinians."

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hovered between life and death Thursday, under heavy sedation and breathing with the aid of a respirator, as his doctors waited anxiously to assess the effects of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Doctors may attempt today to bring the 77-year-old leader out of a medically induced coma, into which he was placed following nearly eight hours of intensive and delicate neurosurgery. Or they may wait up to three days to do so.

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for "dividing God's land." "God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV program "The 700 Club." "You read the Bible and he says, `This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, `No, this is mine.'

The stroke that left Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hospitalized has abruptly recast the nation's election campaign and raised questions about whether the mass of centrist voters he hoped to mobilize under a new party would hold together behind a replacement leader. The seriousness of Sharon's condition Thursday made it appear unlikely he could continue serving as prime minister and lead his new movement, Kadima, or Forward, in elections still scheduled for March 28.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke has left a gaping hole in the Bush administration's approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and stabilizing the broader Middle East. For much of President Bush's tenure, U.S. policy in the dispute has been shaped more by Sharon's ideas than any other factor. Sharon remained in grave condition Thursday at a hospital in Jerusalem, where he was placed in a medically induced coma after nearly eight hours of neurosurgery.

For Palestinians, Ariel Sharon has long symbolized the iron fist of Israel. He is remembered as the leader who fathered the hated Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and who besieged Palestinian cities at the height of the intifada. He is loathed for the concrete wall he is building to divide Israel from a shrinking West Bank, and for his unwavering refusal to deal with Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian Authority president.