Israelis vote in crucial poll
2006-03-28 08:44
Jerusalem - Israelis began voting in an
election on Tuesday that interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has
called a referendum on his plan to uproot remote settlements in
the West Bank if peacemaking with the Palestinians stays frozen.
Balloting opened at 07:00 with Israeli police on
their highest state of alert for possible Palestinian bombings.
Media exit polls were due to be issued immediately after voting
ends at 22:00.
Opinion polls have predicted Olmert's centrist Kadima party,
founded late last year by Ariel Sharon before the prime minister
suffered a stroke and went into a coma, will win about 34 seats,
enough to form a governing coalition in the 120-member
parliament.
For Olmert, a Kadima victory would represent a vote of
confidence in "consolidation", his term for unilateral steps to
set Israel's frontier by 2010 through the removal of remote West
Bank settlements and strengthening of bigger enclaves.
Fate
Olmert has said the moves, seen by Palestinians as a bid to
deny them a viable state and annex land Israel occupied in the
1967 Middle East war, would be a last resort in the continued
absence of progress along a United States-backed peace "road map".
Opinion polls published in the home stretch of a lacklustre
election campaign forecast the centre-left Labour Party led by
former trade union chief Amir Peretz will take second place,
with about 21 seats, making it a likely coalition partner.
The right-wing Likud party, headed by former Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, was touted to take about 14 seats.
Israeli right-wingers, who failed to stop a withdrawal of
settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip last year that
then-Likud chief Sharon championed in a reversal of policy, said
removing more settlements would reward Palestinian violence.
But unilateralism could appeal to many Israelis worn down by
a five-year-old Palestinian uprising and concerned by the
crushing victory the Islamic militant group Hamas scored in
January's election in the West Bank and Gaza.
A policy of unilateralism could spell the end of the road
map, which envisaged a cessation of violence and the start of
mutual steps leading to the creation of a Palestinian state
alongside a secure Israel.
Tuesday's ballot will be the fifth in a decade in Israel,
where no party has ever won enough votes to form a majority
government on its own and coalitions are often narrow and
fragile.