Doctors treating Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have decided to wait until tomorrow before attempting to bring him out of a medically induced coma.
Surgeons at Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital, where Mr Sharon (77) has been under sedation and on a respirator since Wednesday's stroke, said there is a good chance he will survive although it is unclear how much his faculties have been impaired.
At a press briefing, doctors said they are seeing "continuous improvement" in Mr Sharon's condition, but he still remains critical.
The medical consensus was that even if he survived, Mr Sharon - for many, Israel's most dominant figure since founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion - was unlikely to return to politics.
The death or incapacity of Mr Sharon, who raised peace hopes by pulling Israeli settlers and troops out of Gaza in September to end 38 years of military rule, would create a void in Israeli politics and efforts to forge peace with the Palestinians.
"We hope the prime minister will recover, gain strength, and with God's help, return to run the Israeli government and lead Israel," acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, sitting next to Sharon's vacant chair, said at the weekly cabinet meeting.
"We were very encouraged to hear the doctors' assessment that the situation is stabilising and even improving, and that there is a glimmer of hope," Mr Olmert said.
Dr Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the hospital director, said yesterday that Mr Sharon's condition had improved slightly after emergency surgery on Friday to staunch bleeding in his skull.
"We as human beings are optimistic," he told reporters. "But I cannot say that the prime minister has come out of danger."