Sharon in Critical Condition After Suffering 'Extensive' Stroke

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a serious stroke on Wednesday night and underwent more than eight hours of emergency brain surgery in an effort to save his life, a hospital official said. As of 9:00 a.m. local time today (2:00 a.m. EST), Mr. Sharon was in intensive care, in stable but critical condition, with the massive bleeding in his brain having been stanched. But his prospects for a full recovery are considered very slim.

Sounds like he's been in the OR twice in twenty four hours and is currently being sedated and ventilated (probably slightly hypercapnic). I'm just guessing this might affect the Arab-Israeli relations. Another article from Reuters specifically talks about these issues:

Doubt hung over whether Israel's giant shift toward the political center -- engineered by Sharon just weeks ago after completing a Gaza pullout -- could survive even until March elections that he had looked certain to win.
Sharon's new centrist party Kadima not only lacks any other leader with his record or ability to forge a new political force, it does not even have a list of election candidates. That may have existed nowhere but in Sharon's head.
"Sharon is Kadima and Kadima is Sharon," wrote Nadav Eyal of the mass-market Maariv newspaper.

Some compared the feeling to the night in 1995 that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.