Informed Speculation

Ariel Sharon’s doctors say his brain damage is irreversible, and he may be faced with the horrible prospect of life in a vegetative state:

The official statement released Thursday by Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem in Jerusalem, where he is being treated, said merely that Sharon was in serious but stable condition after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage on Wednesday due to the rupture of an artery wall. That statement, issued by Hadassah director Professor Shlomo Mor-Yosef, said that Sharon is under sedation, on a respirator and paralyzed; that he is likely to remain under sedation for up to 72 hours; and that it is impossible to know what his condition really is until he emerges from sedation.

Mor-Yosef added that predictions for the future are almost impossible to make. “We can’t know what the results of the surgery will be, whether it will have influenced his motor skills or his ability to think. Only after he comes out of the induced coma will we be able to make an assessment.”

Unofficially, however, Sharon’s doctors echoed the assessment given to Haaretz earlier by other senior doctors who had not personally examined the premier, but were relying on media reports of his condition. These doctors told Haaretz that the prime minister appeared to have suffered extensive and irreversible brain damage.

Depending on the amount of blood he hemorrhaged and where exactly in his brain the hemorrhage occurred, this damage could range from impaired physical and mental functioning to spending the rest of his life in a permanent vegetative state – if he survives at all, the senior doctors said. But based on the information publicly available, the chances that he will survive appear to be low, they added.

Christopher Hitchens, in a piece that it is at times blistering in its condemnation (and that – gasp! – quotes Noam Chomsky approvingly), grudgingly gives the old man credit in the end:

However, once a concession is made in principle, it is harder to resist in practice. There are, and always have been, only four alternatives in the Israeli-Palestinian quadrilateral. The first is the status quo of mingled apartheid and colonization that would eventually see the Israelis ruling without consent over a people as large as or larger than themselves and that is now almost universally seen as intolerable and unsustainable. The second is a state where those under its jurisdiction are equal citizens with the right to vote, which would be the end of Zionism. The third is the destruction or removal of one people by the other or their common ruin in a catastrophic war. The fourth is a partition between two separate states. All have their disadvantages, but the fourth appears to have the fewest and is supported officially by the PLO and endorsed by a probable majority of Israeli and diaspora Jews. For most of his career, Sharon supported the first option and conducted occasional flirtations with the expulsionist supporters of the third option. His conversion to the fourth may have taken unpleasing forms—a wall is a wall is a wall—but it did begin to acknowledge the contours of Palestinian statehood, and this counts as one of the better ironies of history.

A month ago, I described the new Kadima party, created by Sharon’s departure from Likud and Shimon Peres’ resignation from Labor, as “dead men walking.” Actuarially, it is not a good proposition (Peres won’t see 80 again) as recent events have demonstrated. The person who seems to benefit most in the short run is Benjamin Netanyahu. However, the quadrilateral has been altered forever, and to a great extent by Sharon, and this seems to call for some recognition.

Indeed it does, Christopher. While I defer as always to Hitchens in his greater knowledge of this and most areas, let it be said that in recent years, the only worthwhile progress to be made on the Israeli/Palestinian front has been initiated by Sharon. For that reason, and for reasons of common decency towards an historic figure, I can only grieve at the latest reports…