Family members of comatose former Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have gathered at his bedside as his health as reportedly taken a turn for the worse and is seriously deteriorating. Israeli media reports say he has suffered renal failure.

85-year old Sharon has been hospitalized in a persistent vegetative state since suffering a massive stroke in January 2006 while serving in office.  Although he was brought to the family home once in 2010, he’s only occasionally opened his eyes and made a sound over the past seven years.

Sharon is admired among Israelis for his service in the Battle for Jerusalem and War of Independence as well as several military campaigns since.  He became Prime Minister in 2001 and served until his second stroke in 2006.  Sharon has mostly been in hospital ever since.

But Sharon is reviled among Palestinians for that same military activity, as well as his role as an architect of Israeli settlement in occupied Palestinian territories.  While serving as defense minister in 1982, he masterminded Israel's invasion of Lebanon.  During that campaign, Israel’s Lebanese Christian militia allies massacred hundreds of Palestinians in two Beirut refugee camps under Israeli control.

In 2005, he ordered a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and was believed to be preparing more territorial concessions when he suffered the second debilitating stroke.