Israel's Peres collapses, recovers in hospital

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israeli President Shimon Peres was taken to hospital late on Saturday after briefly passing out during a ceremony in Tel Aviv, a spokeswoman for the office of the 86-year-old Nobel peace laureate said.

Peres's personal physician, who was attending him, was quoted by Israel's YNet news Web site as saying the head of state was not gravely ill and would probably just spend a night in hospital under observation before returning to his duties.

"His condition is satisfactory," said the doctor, Rafi Valdan, who is also Peres's son-in-law. "We are transferring him for monitoring for the night ... and I expect he'll be back at work tomorrow."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/12/AR2009091202028.html

apart from concern for his own health, I would worry about who might replace him in the present political climate.

The presidency of Israel is a ceremonial post for the most part.

That being said, I hope President Shimon Peres makes a full recovery.

Quite scary considering who the current PM is. The President is the equivalent of the Governor-General here and does all the ceremonial head of state fluffy stuff. I saw Peres in an interview with George Negus earlier this year. He came across as a decent sort of guy, and when it came to stuff he said about the Palestinians, I only had one face-palm moment, so he was pretty reasonable. Having said that, he's really old and getting crook is par for the course at that age. I wish there was an upper age limit where politicians and heads of state were made to retire. It'd drive me absolutely crazy if I had to work with someone in their mid to late 80's...