Former prime minister Ariel Sharon is responsive and gaining weight, according
to his son Gilad Sharon.
“When he is awake, he looks at me and moves his
fingers when I ask him to,” Gilad Sharon told The New York Times in an interview
published on Thursday night. “I am sure he hears me.”
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Ariel Sharon, 83,
has been in a coma since his second stroke, in January 2006. (His first stroke
took place the previous month.) Gilad Sharon has written a biography of his
father, which is set to be released in Hebrew and English on
Tuesday.
Gilad Sharon said that doctors encouraged him and his brother,
former MK Omri Sharon, to let their father die after his second stroke. They
refused, with Gilad writing that he dreamed that the medical staff would tell
him there is no hope for Ariel Sharon, “but he stared at me with this look, with
those green-gray eyes of his, and I knew I would never give up, and that I
simply would not leave him.”
Gilad Sharon reportedly takes credit in the
biography for the idea to “disengage” from the Gaza Strip.
He is very
critical of current Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, according to the Times.
He calls Netanyahu “not only subversive, but a coward.”
He quotes Ariel
Sharon as having said to Netanyahu during the latter’s first term (1996-99) as
prime minister: “A liar you were, and a liar you have remained,” after Netanyahu
purportedly reneged on a promise to make Sharon finance minister.
Gilad
Sharon joined Kadima, the party his father founded, in January of this year, but
told the Times that he is unsure whether he will enter politics.
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