Jerusalem----March 23.....No where in the modern history of Israel, has an elected leader ruled from a death like, comatose state. But then again, we have had no kings such as Ariel Sharon for many centuries.

With only a few days to go before Israel casts votes for a new government, Sharon's image, voice and political views dominate the Israel landscape. From TV ads, to billboards and cinema advertisements, a young Sharon, a battle weary Sharon wearing a head bandage, a winning Sharon entering Jerusalem in 1967 with Moshe Dayan and the elderly, father-like Sharon looks down on us and says that everything will be all right.

After all Sharon has left us with a political party for which we know represents him and his moderate views.

"He's fighting for his life, and we are fighting for his way," the acting prime minister Ehud Olmert told an audience recently in Nazareth Illit, a city in the Galilee region. "We are carrying his flag, the one he carried in his political life, and we'll carry it forward to victory!" he shouted, to hearty applause. Images of Sharon were projected behind the dais.

The shadow of Ariel Sharon looms large, and that seems to suit the new political party which he formed - Kadima - in the weeks before his stroke. Ehud Olmert, the former mayor of Jerusalem, unexpectedly fell into power when the prime minister suffered a massive stroke in early January. The election will determine whether he and the new Israel Kadima party that Sharon founded and Olmert now heads will continue to govern.

The Bush Administration, despite its commitment to the road map and a negotiated settlement of the borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state, did little to dissuade Sharon from Kadima's present policy. It did warn Israel that it it should curtail further development in West Bank settlements and that it should do nothing that would compromise final status negotiations. The Hamas victory and the collapse of any coherent US policy has entrenched the view of most Israelis that there is no alternative to disengagement and it has allowed Ehud Olmert, the acting Prime Minister and the leader of the Kadima party, to spell out during the election campaign what Sharon had only implied: that the security fence, which in some places cuts deeply into the West Bank, would become Israel's permanent border and that by 2010 the disengagement process would be complete.

By its silence about Olmert's plan - or any other Israel plan for that matter - the Bush Administration has signalled that it too believes that the peace process, after the Hamas victory, is virtually dead.

As for Sharon, Israel physicians recently announced that despite the extensive comatose state in which the Israel Prime Minister has been in since early January, Sharon may yet regain consciousness. Sharon Professor Shlomo Mor Yosef, director of Hadassah University Hospital where Sharon is being treated, stated that the possibility still remains that the Sharon will awaken. “It is not beyond all chances,” Mor Yosef told reporters at Tel Aviv University. However, MorYosef cautioned that though Sharon may awaken, his physical and mental facilities may have been affected by his current state.

Ariel Sharon will be moved to a long-term care facility after elections later this month, Israeli Channel 10 TV reported. The Israel prime minister will be moved to the Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv. Doctors have said that every day Sharon, 78, fails to regain consciousness, his chances for recovery diminish. Sharon has had seven operations, including three brain surgeries, since the Jan. 4 stroke.

Some of comatose Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's personal effects have already been moved from his office in Jerusalem to his ranch in southern Israel, a senior government official said. The official said Sharon 's belongings would not be removed from the prime minister's official residence in Jerusalem until after Israel 's March 28 general elections. The Haaretz daily said the items removed from the office included handwritten notes that Sharon jotted down during meetings, but the official couldn't confirm the report.

As Sharon did not register for the upcoming elections, he will lose his Knesset seat this month which means he would be ineligible to run for Prime Minister. But his ghost appears to be hovering above Olmert and the Israel public. A ghost for whom the majority of Israelis embrace.

To convince a wary Israel public that he is suitable to continue as the nation's leader, Olmert, 60, seems intent on positioning himself as the rightful successor to Sharon. So far, the strategy is working. Kadima has maintained an advantage of roughly 2 to 1 in most polls over each of the two main opposing parties. But if the polls hold up, Olmert will soon have to step beyond the legacy of Sharon and make difficult decisions that his predecessor had put off. Olmert's ability to tie himself to Sharon has appeared to make up for his own lack of appeal. His party's lead has also stood up to a recent flurry of news stories that questioned the propriety of real estate transactions in which he had been involved.

In a recent poll in the daily Maariv newspaper, only one-third of respondents said Olmert would be their choice if they were able to vote directly for a prime minister, rather than choosing among parties. Still, he rated higher than his two main competitors, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the conservative Likud Party and Amir Peretz, who heads left-leaning Labor. Olmert presents an image and style very different from that of his predecessor.

Sharon exuded a rough-hewn charisma; Olmert is urbane. Sharon is one of Israel's military heroes; Olmert made his name working the levers of government. Sharon was part of the venerated generation of Israel's founders, whereas Olmert belongs to a younger generation which, in the view of many Israelis, has yet to prove itself. Despite the contrasts, Olmert has a legitimate claim to carry out Sharon's legacy. Over the last two years, Sharon executed an ideological about-face. His shift led to Israel's withdrawal last summer from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank and then to Sharon's withdrawal from the Likud and founding of Kadima. Those moves altered Israeli politics and, perhaps, the future of Israeli-Arab relations. Through much of that turn, Olmert served as Sharon's proxy.

In 2003, Olmert became the first Likud member to call openly for "disengagement," the policy of unilateral pullbacks aimed at separating Israel from the Palestinians. A year later, with Israelis debating whether to leave Gaza, Olmert called for pulling out of parts of the West Bank, saying in an interview that "Israel's interest requires a disengagement on a wider scale."

As Sharon's point man in that debate, Olmert so alienated pro-settler members of the Likud that his future in the party was in serious doubt. And as with Sharon, Olmert's move toward disengagement represented a striking and somewhat puzzling turnaround. Olmert's political origins were on the hard right of the Israeli spectrum, rooted in an ideological tradition that called for Jewish control over all of the biblical Land of Israel. His father was a member of Irgun, the underground group of Jewish fighters in what was then Palestine, and the Herut party that preceded Likud. The younger Olmert belonged to the rightist Beitar youth movement, then was elected to the Knesset in 1973 at age 28. He was elected mayor of Jerusalem in 1993 and also held several Cabinet posts, most recently as finance minister and vice premier. Olmert has come under investigation more than once for political corruption allegations but never convicted of wrongdoing. It was as Jerusalem's mayor that Olmert first stepped into big shoes, defeating the near-legendary Teddy Kollek.

Sharon knew very well who his second in command was. Sharon and Olmert shared and continue to embrace an unbreakable trust.

Sharon who at the age of 14, joined the Gadna, a paramilitary youth battalion, and later the Haganah, the underground paramilitary force and the Jewish military precursor to the Israel Defense Forces. At the creation of Israel (and Haganah's transformation into the Israel Defense Forces), Sharon was a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade. Sharon was severely wounded by the Jordanian Arab Legion in the Second Battle of Latrun, an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the besieged Jewish community of Jerusalem. His injuries eventually healed. A year and a half later, he was asked to return to active service in the rank of major and as the leader of the new Unit 101, Israel's first special forces unit.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, Sharon commanded the most powerful armored division on the Sinai front which made a breakthrough in the Kusseima-Abu-Ageila fortified area. In 1969, he was appointed the Head of IDF's Southern Command. He retired in August 1973. At the start of the Yom Kippur War on October 6, 1973, Sharon was called back to duty and assigned to command a reserve armored division. It was Sharon who helped locate a breach between the Egyptian forces, which he then exploited by capturing a bridgehead on October 16 and throwing a bridge across the Suez Canal. The divisions of Sharon and Abraham Adan (Bren) passed over this bridge into Africa advancing to within 101 kilometers of Cairo. They wreaked havoc on the supply lines of the Third Army stretching to the south of them, cutting off and encircling the Third Army. Sharon was the war hero who saved Israel from defeat in Sinai. A photo of Sharon wearing a head bandage on the Suez Canal became a famous symbol of Israeli military prowess.

If the latest polls are accurate, and barring any sudden upsets, Kadima is set to emerge from Tuesday’s polls with 37 seats, slightly lower than initial predictions after the party was formed last November as a centrist force anchored by Sharon’s personal popularity.

Sharon never expected to be out of action just a few days before an Israel national election. And his family, close friends and political associates made sure that he was still running the campaign of Kadima - even if it was with eyes closed.

As a military strategist, Sharon would have completely agreed with his body and soul being used to win a public relations victory for a political party that he created. A party which advocates a return to the Road Map in order to generate a two-state solution to the end of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, to maintain the status quo between religion and state and encourage employment through domestic and international investment opportunities. Running in the campaign are Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres, Tzipi Livni, Meir Sheetrit, Avi Dichter, Marina Solodkin, Haim Ramon, Lt.-Gen. (Res.) Shaul Mofaz, Tzachi Hanegbi and Abraham Hirchson.

They are all holding Sharon's field army medical stretcher high above their heads. Carrying their wounded commander to yet another victory. For the Israel people will not be voting for policy this coming Tuesday, but rather honoring the last war hero from 1948. Voting for national honor, pride, wisdom, practical compromise and the brave values for which Sharon will be taking to his final command. Sharon will be leading Kadima (a word which defines the essential "go forward" battle cry) to the Prime Minister's office as he lays in a hospital bed, kept alive by machines and an Israeli public which refuses to let him go.

ISRAEL NEWS AGENCY

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