Former Israeli PM goes home for trial period

FORMER Israeli premier Ariel Sharon was taken yesterday from the hospital bed where he has been lying in a coma for nearly five years, for a trial period at home, a hospital official said.

An intensive care ambulance carried the ex-premier to his Sycamore Farm home in southern Israel.

Shlomo Noy, head of the rehabilitation unit at Sheba Hospital, near Tel Aviv, said that Sharon, 82, was expected to return to the hospital tomorrow. The exercise will be repeated to see if he can be treated at home permanently.

On January 4, 2006, the premier suffered a massive stroke and slipped into a coma from which he has never recovered, leaving behind him a gaping political vacuum.

Sharon collapsed five months after he embarked on a radical new path which saw him pulling out all Jewish settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation.

Since then, however, peace efforts have led nowhere. At the end of 2008, Israel launched a devastating 22-day offensive in Gaza.

Fresh attempts to get the sides talking, which began six weeks ago, are now deadlocked by a dispute over Israeli settlements.

Noy said that while coma patients in general were better off in their home environment, a dramatic improvement in Sharon’s condition should not be expected.