Sharon's new political gamble, at 77, signalled a new era for Israeli politics and a chance for the public to turn the tables both on Likud and Labour. With a charismatic leader at its helm - a farmer-warrior, a visionary and a man who embodied, for better or worse, the Zionist century of the Jewish people - Kadima offered a new political chapter in Israel's history. It would lead the country into the uncharted waters of the Islamist decade under the guidance of a seasoned helmsman, who could be either ruthless and prudent, but knew the right time for both.

But history, politics and biology rarely intersect. At ten minutes to midnight, Sharon exited from history, leaving a party whose very raison d'être he was without its greatest asset and depriving Israel of the last gift the founding generation could offer - a vision and a hope where no vision was left and no hope had survived.

Now Kadima, a political project in its infancy, had to follow in Sharon's footsteps without knowing what he would have done, with Hamas in power and the Iranian threat on Israel's northern doorstep. Perhaps even Sharon did not know what demons he had unleashed by abandoning Gaza to Hamas.