Ariel Sharon moved home to his Negev ranch

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been moved to the family ranch in the Negev on Friday morning. It is the first time since he fell comatose from a stroke five years ago. Security officials kept him out of view during the transfer.

On Friday morning the former Prime Minister was taken in an ambulance from the Sheba Medical Centre in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, to the family's ranch. The decision to move him arrived after the request of the family, the consent of the hospital and the € 300.000 annual funding approved this week by the Financial Committee of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, for Sharon’s treatment.

Interviewed on the National Israeli Radio, Dr Shlome Noy, director of the rehabilitation department of the Sheba Hospital, said that "the aspiration in the hospital is to ensure that any chronic patient, when possible, is with his community, at home".

Behind this move home there is the hope that his situation will get better “but - he added - the improvements that we talk about in such situations are not great improvements”. Anyway Mr Sharon is expected to be returned to hospital for regular check-ups.

Ariel Sharon, 82-years-old, went into a come at Hadassah Hospital (Jerusalem) in January 2006, when he suffered a massive stroke, and has since been in a vegetative state. Even if he is likely to never recover, Sharon still casts a shadow over Israeli politics.

Admired by many Israelis as a great military leader and reviled by Palestinians, Mr Sharon was one of the most important promoter of the expansion of the buildings and settlements in the occupied territories and the pioneer of the construction of the separation barrier along the border with the West Bank.

During the 1982 Lebanon War, while Sharon was Defense Minister, the Sabra and Shatila massacre occurred and between 800 and 3500 Palestinian civilians were killed. The killings led some to label Sharon "the Butcher of Beirut".

In 2001 he was elected Prime Minister, pledging to achieve "security and true peace", and in 2005 Sharon has embarked on a course of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and from four settlements in the northern West Bank.

Article published on Digital Journal - November 12th, 2010.