JERUSALEM, 12 January 2006 — Israel has pulled out of a $50-million contract with US television evangelist Pat Robertson after he suggested Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine retribution for his pullout from the Gaza Strip. “We were due to sign a contract in the near future with Roberson for the construction of a new Christian heritage center in the Galilee,” said Ido Hartuv, adviser to Israeli Tourism Minister Avraham Hirshson. But following Robertson’s comments, which were made just hours after the Israeli Prime Minister Sharon suffered a massive brain hemorrhage last Wednesday, Hirshson decided to cut all ties with the controversial preacher.
“We, as the State of Israel, cannot accept what he said and we will not do any business with him or with anyone else who agrees with his view,” Hartuv told AFP. As the Israeli prime minister battled for life, Robertson suggested that Sharon was being punished for “dividing God’s land,” in reference to his withdrawal of all troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip last summer.
Sharon, he said, “was dividing God’s land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course.” But Hartuv stressed that the contract to build a Christian heritage center in the northern Galilee region was still open to any other Christian leader who was interested in bringing Christian tourists to Israel.
Meanwhile, Sharon’s chief surgeon said yesterday that he was stunned by the Israeli leader’s powers of recovery as the hospital reported a further upturn in his condition. The 77-year-old prime minister remains in intensive care but doctors said they had been able to all but stop the drugs that had been keeping him in an artificial coma.
His chief surgeon Felix Umansky told AFP it could take months to assess the full extent of the damage Sharon has suffered, but he said his progress so far had defied all expectations, amid suggestions by some of the prime minister’s allies that he could lead his new Kadima party at a March general election. The latest update from Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital spoke of a further slight improvement in the premier’s condition and said he had now been largely weaned off his sedatives.
