The former Israeli Prime Minister, once a general and a war hero, has been on hand for almost every decisive moment in the country’s short history, but is absent from the fray.

Instead, his sons Omri and Gilad and his wife, Inbal, take it in turns to watch over the 78-year-old in his bright room with its picture window in the Sheba Medical Centre. Close friends of the former leader occasionally gather outside the room to greet the family and reminisce.

Those who had put such faith in his leadership miss him most in the midst of the conflict. But Israelis who appeared to move on when the Prime Minister collapsed with a brain haemorrhage on January 4 are also suffering twinges that he is not around now.

“Of course the Israeli people feel different today without him,” Uri Dan, 71, a lifelong confidant, said. “They now realise it was the historic loss of a gigantic leader, a colossus.”

Mr Dan, who fought alongside Mr Sharon, said that he was not a lone voice pining for the lost leader. He pointed to the admission by Meir Shitreet, a Cabinet Minister, that he missed Mr Sharon and his war-time experience, while an article by the liberal columnist Sever Plotzker in Yedioth Ahronoth was headed simply: “Where is Sharon?” “He is a Churchillian figure,” Mr Dan said. “He has real qualities of leadership and commanded the trust of the people.”

Reuven Adler, another member of Mr Sharon’s inner circle, is equally unswerving in his belief in the former leader’s ability to make the right calls in tough situations.

“He was a master of the kind of situation Israel finds itself in today,” the advertising man, who wrote speeches for Mr Sharon, said. “He became an icon — ‘Mr Security, Mr Defence, Mr Warrior’. In circumstances like these he knew he was playing on his field.”

But Mr Adler is less certain that Israelis will be thinking of Mr Sharon. He thinks that the public has confidence in the man who donned “Arik’s” mantle, Ehud Olmert. “It’s two different disciplines,” Mr Adler said. “Mr Olmert is like a company CEO; very intelligent, very clever, a solicitor. I believe we’re in safe hands and I think Israelis feel the same way.”

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