TEL AVIV ? Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was moved Sunday to a long-term care facility, a sign that his medical team does not believe he will awaken from an extended coma.

Doctors at Tel Aviv’s Sheba Medical Center, where Sharon arrived in an ambulance, said they planned to give him extensive therapy, but if he does not improve over the coming months, they will send him home.

“We are expecting a difficult treatment, because in his condition, complications are expected,” Dr. Zeev Rotstein, head of Sheba, told reporters. “We will treat him as best we can.”

Sharon, 78, who for decades personified Israel’s military might, was the country’s most popular politician when he suffered a devastating stroke Jan. 4 that plunged him into a coma.