Ariel Sharon, who was Israel 's prime minister in one of its most turbulent phases and one of the most controversial figures in its history, has died, aged 85, after spending the last eight years of his life in a coma.
Dr Shlomo Noy, who has personally treated Sharon since his debilitating stroke eight years ago, said that Mr Sharon had struggled with "surprising strength" over the past week as his condition had deterioriated. "He departed peacefully with his wife and family at his side," he said.
The decorated former army general was pronounced dead at the Tel Hashomer Hospital, near Tel Aviv, days after doctors reported a sharp deterioration in his health, leading to multiple organ failure. He was prime minister from 2001 until he suffered a massive stroke in January 2006, which left him incapacitated.
"He went when he decided to go," Gilad Sharon, his son, said.
Sharon's death set in motion plans for an elaborate state funeral for a divisive political figure who excited widely contrasting emotions among his admirers and detractors.
It drew a warm tribute from Shimon Peres, Israel's president and a political contemporary and rival, who described him as a "dear friend".
"Arik [Mr Sharon's widely-used nick-name] was a brave soldier and a daring leader who loved his nation and his nation loved him," Mr Peres said in a statement issued by his office. "He was one of Israel's great protectors and most important architects, who knew no fear and certainly never feared vision.
"He knew how to take difficult decisions and implement them. We all loved him and he will be greatly missed. I send my condolences to the Sharon family, may he rest in peace."
Yuval Stenitiz, the Israeli intelligence and strategic affairs minister and one of Mr Netanyahu's closest allies, said Mr Sharon's death meant Israel had "lost a dear man, a great leader and a bold warrior".
His tribute contrasted to the gloating tone of Hamas, the Islamist group which runs Gaza, which said it greeted the former Israeli leader's death with "extreme happiness".
"We have become more confident in victory with the departure of this tyrant," said Sami Abu Zurhi, a spokesman for Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel and several of whose leading figures were killed in "targeted assassinations" while Mr Sharon was prime minister . "Our people today feel extreme happiness at the death and departure of this criminal whose hands were smeared with the blood of our people and the blood of our leaders here and in exile."
Many Israelis respected Mr Sharon for his combativeness, admiring his uncompromisingly hawkish response to the second Palestinian intifada [uprising] after he was elected prime minister in 2001. Mr Sharon ordered a series of overwhelming military incursions into the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip amid a wave of violence that saw hundreds of Israelis die in suicide bomb attacks.
His premiership was also marked by the decison to build a massive separation barrier though the West Bank, justified as a measure to foil suicide bombers. Palestinians lambasted the long concrete and steel barrier as an "apartheid wall" and insisted its true goal was the annexation of land they wanted for a future state.
Mr Sharon's reputation as one of Israel's leading hawks was well established long before he became prime minister.
In 1983, he was forced to step down as defence minister after an official public inquiry implicated him in the massacre of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese Christian forces in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The massacre happened after Israel's invasion of Lebanon, of which Mr Sharon was a leading instigator under the leadership of the then prime minister, Menachem Begin.
Serving in the Israeli army, where he rose to the rank of general, Mr Sharon had a reputation for ruthless violence, recklessness and occasional insubordination. During the Suez War of 1956, he exceeded orders by capturing the Mitla pass in Egypt's Sinai region. The action cost 38 Israeli and 250 Egyptian lives, drew widespread international condemnation and overshadowed Mr Sharon's military career for years afterwards.
Yet in 1973, drafted back into the army shortly after having retired, he was credited with turning the tide also in Sinai after Egypt and Syria launched the Yom Kippur war in an unsuccessful attempt to re-gain territories captured by Israeli in an earlier conflict.
Ironically, Mr Sharon's stroke came at a time when he was under fire from Israeli Right-wingers for having unilaterally withdrawn Israeli forces and troops from the Gaza Strip in what some hawks saw as an act of weakness.
The move split Mr Sharon's Likud party and led to him leaving to form a new centrist political movement called Kadima, which won the 2006 elections under Ehud Olmert, his close ally and successor as prime minister.
Born Ariel Sheinermann, Mr Sharon was married and widowed twice. After his first wife, Margalit, died in a car crash in 1962, Mr Sharon married her sister, Lily, the following year. Lily died from lung cancer in 2000.
Mr Sharon is survived by two sons from his second marriage. Omri, 49, his eldest son, served as a political adviser to his father and was jailed in 2008 for illegal election financing. Gilad, 46, the younger son, runs the family farm in the Negev. An earlier son, Gur, from Mr Sharon's first marriage died in 1967 from wounds suffered in a shooting accident.
Ariel Sharon in 2001. 
Ariel Sharon, the former Prime Minister of Israel, died today at the  just outside Tel Aviv after his conditioned worsened significantly over the last few days. Sharon had been in a coma since suffering a stroke in January 2006.

Before becoming a politician, Sharon served in the army, having joined the  at age fourteen — the Jewish paramilitary operating in the  before the founding of the State of Israel.

Sharon was elected to the Knesset in 1973, then took a number of ministerial roles in the government including as a security adviser to Yitzhak Rabin, terms as minister of agriculture, defence, trade and industry, construction and housing, and national infrastructure. He became Foreign Minister in 1998 and Prime Minister in 2001. In 2005, Sharon left the Likud Party to form Kadima and pursued a policy of .

Sharon was married twice: his first wife Margalit died in 1962, his second wife Lily died in 2000. He is survived by two sons.