Sharon Undergoes Emergency Surgery

Hospital Calls Procedure Successful, But Condition Remains Unclear

JERUSALEM, Feb. 11 -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, comatose for the past five weeks following a massive stroke, was rushed into emergency stomach surgery Saturday morning after doctors discovered extensive damage to his digestive tract.

After the removal of a substantial portion of his large intestine, Sharon was said to be in critical but stable condition with no "immediate danger to his life, " according to a hospital spokesman.

The 77-year-old prime minister's condition has been serious but stable since he emerged from several rounds of emergency surgery last month to stop the brain hemorrhaging that followed his Jan. 4 stroke.

A member of Israel's founding generation, Sharon has been involved in many of the seminal events that have shaped the modern state, first as a military leader and more recently as a politician whose acceptance of a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict represented a remarkable ideological turning point for the longtime hawk.

Sharon's prognosis has been grim for weeks, and few believed he would recover sufficiently to return to politics and seek a third term as prime minister in the March elections.

But, as a historic figure whose unfinished political program has been embraced by a majority of Israelis, his condition remains a point of strong interest to much of the country.

Last year, Sharon evacuated 8,500 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip in a unilateral withdrawal from territory Palestinians envision as part of their future state. The move drew international praise for Sharon, who is despised in the Arab world for taking Israel into the 1982 Lebanon war and for the harsh tactics he has employed during the most recent Palestinian uprising.

The ideological godfather of the settlement movement for decades, Sharon turned against the notion that Israel could hold all of the territory it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War while preserving a democratic Jewish majority within those boundaries.

He bolted from his longtime political home, the Likud Party, after the Gaza withdrawal and formed the centrist Kadima party, which many Israelis believe will push to determine Israel's final borders through negotiation or additional unilateral withdrawal.

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was briefed Saturday on Sharon's medical condition, has echoed Sharon's positions as he prepares to lead Kadima into the March elections. Polls suggest the party could win more than a third of Israel's 120-seat parliament, making it by far the largest bloc.

Olmert, 60, has said setting Israel's final borders will be the next government's most pressing task. Like Sharon, Olmert has said that those final boundaries, drawn in a way to insure a lasting Jewish majority within them, would include the large West Bank settlement blocs, security zones including the Jordan Valley, and all of Jerusalem.

Doctors discovered problems in Sharon's digestive tract through an abdominal scan carried out Saturday morning.

Bossem-Levy, the hospital spokeswoman, said the test showed restricted blood flow in the region, possibly a sign of dead tissue. The surgery was expected to last until late Saturday afternoon.

The prime minister, severely overweight before his stroke, has been fed through a tube ever since. Sharon's sons, Omri and Gilad, rushed to the hilltop hospital here early Saturday to be with him along with his key advisers.