At 10.30pm last Wednesday, Israel’s mobile telephone system almost collapsed as thousands of people feverishly relayed to each other the news that has plunged the country’s politics and the entire Middle East peace process into upheaval.

Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, had just suffered a massive stroke. There was severe bleeding in his brain. He appeared to be close to death.

Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, heard about it through a text message as he was being driven to an election rally in southern Israel. He immediately headed for a nearby supporter’s house, where he remained glued to the television set for hours.

By the next day, the shock sensed by Netanyahu and Israel’s other political leaders had been replaced by a grim sense of purpose. With the realisation that the Sharon era was almost certainly over, the struggle to succeed him was beginning in earnest.

A few miles from the intensive care unit where Sharon lay fighting for his life on the seventh floor of the Hadassah University medical centre, Netanyahu was holed up with aides in his luxurious top-floor flat. He puffed on a Havana cigar and resolved to seize the unexpected opportunity to return to power.

The Likud party has been in a shambles since an internal rebellion against the pullout from Gaza. Sharon walked out, leaving the hardline Netanyahu to pick up the Likud leadership, and formed the new Kadima (Forward) party.

Kadima looked set win a general election scheduled for March 28, and there were widespread expectations that Sharon would use victory as a mandate for a partial pullout from the West Bank, leading at long last to a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Polls at the end of last week still showed Kadima and Ehud Olmert — Sharon’s deputy, who has been named acting prime minister — as favourites. Many commentators do not trust such findings, however, ascribing them to the emotional reaction caused by the collapse of Sharon. Can hopes for peace survive him?

THE pressures on Sharon were intense as he returned to his beloved Sycamore ranch in the Negev desert south of Jerusalem last Wednesday to prepare for an operation the next day to repair a hole in the heart.

It had been a frantic time even by the standards of a man whose obesity — he is 5ft 7in tall but weighs 18 stone 8lb — belied his raw energy. At the age of 77 he was still working more than 12 hours a day.

In the past few weeks Sharon had broken the mould of Israeli politics by creating Kadima, mustering a monumental effort to draw political rivals away from life-long political allegiances to Labour and Likud in order to establish a dominant new force.

He was facing an imminent decision on whether to let Palestinians in east Jerusalem vote in Palestinian elections due on January 25, and the likelihood of a strong showing by Hamas, the militant organisation that has mounted countless terrorist attacks in Israel yet commands up to 40% of popular support in Gaza and the West Bank.

Adding to the weight on his shoulders was the declaration of an end to a “truce” by such militants, whose suicide bombers have terrorised Israelis during the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, that began in 2000.

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