Ariel Sharon's Twilight Zone

Eliana Aponte, Pool / AP Photo Too healthy to die, too injured to rule, Israel’s legendary warrior and former prime minister lives in a comatose limbo—just like the Middle East peace process. Lynn Sherr reports from Sharon's bedside on his physical state, his legacy and whether he'll ever wake up.

The old soldier’s eyes are open. Sometimes he’s propped up in front of a TV, where images of nature and animals, especially cows, flicker across the screen. His family tells him the day’s news, the goings on at his beloved farm. They read to him, alternating between two books at a time, just as he used to do for himself. They play classical music. When his white hair grows long, they trim it. And once in a while, when someone tells him to move a toe, he does.

Whether Ariel Sharon takes in any of this activity, no one knows for sure. Because Israel’s once-robust prime minister and legendary battlefield hero—the decorated warrior, the controversial hawk and finally, beginning in 2001, the centrist prime minister who transformed the political landscape—has been in a coma for nearly four years, felled by a massive stroke. While not brain-dead, the 81 year old exists in a persistent vegetative state. He generally breathes on his own, but must be fed by a tube. He cannot speak, walk, or think. Probably.

If Sharon hadn’t suffered a stroke? “I think we would have a Palestinian state,” says former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“There is a feeling of communication, of realization—I mean, the eyes are open and there is kind of, like, you feel that he feels your presence,” says Dr. Shlomo Segev, Sharon’s longtime personal physician and the head of the Institute of Medical Screening at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, just outside Tel Aviv, where Sharon has been hospitalized since May 2006. “So it’s not completely what we call a coma. Not a deep coma, for sure. But if you asked me to quantify that, I cannot.”

Dr. Segev is one of only four regular visitors to the former prime minister. The others are his son Omri, a former member of the Knesset who recently served four months in prison for a campaign finance scandal, and his son Gilad, who now runs the family farm, along with Gilad’s wife, Inbal. The family declined to be interviewed by The Daily Beast, but at least one of them visits every day—every day for nearly four years—at the high-tech medical center that looks like a college campus.

Wander in—as I did—through a bright, breezy lobby filled with recuperating patients, and you come to a small, institutional waiting room, where an Israeli soldier packing a rifle smilingly indicates that it would not be wise to go any further. Down the corridor, two Shin Bet guards protect his room; the staff provides regular physiotherapy. His blood pressure and heartbeat are fine, according to Dr. Segev. And “he looks about the same. You would recognize him.” He adds, with affection for his close friend, “He is a very, very healthy fat man.”

Too healthy to die, too injured to rule; he lives in limbo, just like the Israeli peace process. The irony is unavoidable. Ariel Sharon, who spent his early life expanding the territory of his native land, then abandoned his dream and evicted settlers from Gaza to shrink Israel’s borders in the quest for peace, remains locked inside the barest human boundaries, imprisoned in his own body. He was once so uncompromising—self-confident, supporters said—they called him The Bulldozer. Other names, too. “Arik, King of the Jews,” after his conquest of the Sinai during the Yom Kippur War. “Murderer,” after failing to prevent the massacres of Lebanese civilians at the Sabra and Shatila camps in 1982. Sensitive and cultured. Stubborn and cruel. No one was ever neutral about Arik Sharon. Still true.

To many, including members of the left wing who embraced Sharon when he pulled out of Gaza, he was the modern father of the nation, ultimately creating his own Nixon-in-China moment as the first to accept a two-state solution.