The ruling Kadima party won Tuesday’s general election in Israel, according to exit polls, but with fewer seats than the Acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, wanted in order for him to claim a mandate for his plan to impose Israel’s final borders.
The election proved disastrous for the once dominant Likud party, driven into fourth place by Labour and the rise of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu which advocates removing Arabs from Israel.
According to exit polls on Tuesday night, Kadima won up to 32 seats in the 120-seat Parliament. Labour has about 21, Yisrael Beiteinu 14 and Likud 12. The balance of seats is mostly held by religious and nationalist parties. The turnout, at 63%, was the lowest in Israel’s history.
Olmert’s likely coalition partners are Labour and two smaller parties. He may also turn to the Pensioners party, which has never before held seats in Parliament but is estimated to have won eight in an apparent protest vote.
The election was widely regarded as a referendum on Olmert’s commitment, backed by Labour and the left, to unilaterally withdraw from large parts of the West Bank, to remove tens of thousands of Jewish settlers while retaining the main settlement blocks, and to carve out a border using the West Bank barrier. Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, and other parties on the right argued that pulling out of Palestinian territory would be a victory for terrorism.
In his victory speech, Olmert said he would press ahead with his plan to separate from the Palestinians.
”In the near future we will bring about the shaping of the final borders of the state, guaranteeing a Jewish democratic state,” he said.
The acting prime minister said he wanted to negotiate frontiers with the Palestinians only on condition they recognise Israel and end violence.
”We are prepared to renounce parts of the land of Israel so precious to us, in order to bring about the conditions for you [the Palestinians] to bring about your own dreams and to live side by side with us in peace and tranquillity. The time has come for the Palestinians to adapt their dreams to recognise the reality of Israel,” he said. ”If they do not do this, Israel will take its fate into its own hands. We shall act without agreement with the Palestinians. We shall not wait for ever.”
Labour performed better than predicted by the polls, strengthening the hand of its leader, Amir Peretz, in coalition negotiations. ”Kadima didn’t crush the Labour party,” said a former Labour deputy minister, Michael Melchior.
Olmert, who became acting prime minister after Ariel Sharon suffered a devastating stroke in January, wants to draw the new borders by 2010.
After Kadima’s victory, Hamas’s new Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, said his party saw no merits in Olmert’s plan.
”Let’s see how things will develop in the future. At the moment, what we see is a unilateral separation plan from Olmert. This plan is rejected by the Palestinian people,” he said.
After the exit polls were released there were calls for Netanyahu to resign as leader of Likud, which ruled Israel for five years until Sharon formed Kadima in November.
Netanyahu blamed the collapse in support not on Likud’s opposition to Kadima’s disengagement plan but his own role as finance minister responsible for deep cuts in state spending.
”I spoke with generations of Likud voters and I heard the anger and the frustration over the economic measures that we were compelled to take in order to save the Israeli economy,” he said. ”I intend to continue along the path we have only just begun in order to ensure this movement is rehabilitated and takes its rightful place in the nation’s leadership.” – Guardian Unlimited Â