The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, installed his new government on Thursday with praise for the settler movement and a pledge to make the main Jewish colonies in the West Bank permanently part of Israel by redrawing the country’s borders.
Olmert told the Israeli Parliament, ahead of a confidence vote in the coalition administration led by his Kadima party, which won the election in March, that the future frontier would be ”significantly different than the territories under Israel’s control today”.
That would mean abandoning isolated settlements that put the country’s security ”in danger”, he said. But the government plans to move the affected settlers into the expanding larger colonies that will be formally annexed by the imposition by 2010 of a new Israeli border east of the 1967 frontier and running through the occupied territories.
”The achievements of the settlement movement in its major centres will for ever be an inseparable part of the sovereign state of Israel, with Jerusalem as our united capital. Let us come together around this consensus and turn it into a uniting political and moral fact,” the prime minister said.
However, Olmert may have to rejig the new government if he is to carry through his strategy. The administration has the support of 67 MPs in the 120-seat parliament with Kadima and the Labour party at its core, for the first time producing a prime minister and a defence minister who have not risen to power out of the military.
Olmert has also brought in two smaller parties — the Pensioners’ party, which has a strong social agenda, and the ultra-orthodox Shas party. But Shas has withheld its support for giving up settlements and Israeli officials say the prime minister is looking to draw other parties into the coalition to ensure he does not face the same punishing battles in his cabinet that confronted Ariel Sharon before the pullout from the Gaza Strip.
Olmert told Parliament that last year’s withdrawal of settlers and the military from Gaza and a small part of the northern West Bank was a prelude to a large plan to remove tens of thousands of settlers from the smaller colonies scattered through the occupied territories.
Under the plan, Olmert intends to remove about 60 000 settlers currently living in Israel’s more isolated colonies beyond the concrete and steel West Bank barrier. They would be moved, if they wished, into the larger West Bank settlement blocks of Maale Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion, and parts of Jerusalem, where about 340,000 other settlers live.
”I, like many others, also dreamed and yearned that we would be able to keep the entire land of Israel, and that the day would never come when we would have to relinquish parts of our land,” said Olmert, referring to a belief among many Israelis that they have a legitimate claim to territory up to, and even beyond, the Jordan river. ”I believe with all my heart in the people of Israel’s eternal historic right to the entire land of Israel.”
But he said retaining control of isolated settlements beyond the barrier ”creates an inseparable mixture of populations which will endanger the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state”.
Political sources told the Israeli press yesterday that the plan to remove some settlements and annex others would begin in about 18 months to two years.
Olmert said he would prefer to reach a deal with the Palestinians first through negotiation but if that failed — or, as the Palestinians see it, if they do not agree to surrender large parts of their territory — then he would unilaterally impose borders.
The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, appealed to Olmert to resume talks, dismissing Israeli claims that ”there is no partner for peace”. ”You have a serious partner. We are a partner for negotiations,” Abbas told the Israeli newspaper Maariv. ”I have a mandate to reach an agreement with Ehud Olmert. We have the capability and we have the desire. We must not miss the opportunity.”
The coalition
Kadima 29 seats
Committed to a limited withdrawal from the West Bank and a new border to annex major Jewish settlements
Labour 19 seats
Broadly supports Ehud Olmert’s policy although more serious about negotiations with the Palestinians
Shas 12 seats
Ultra-orthodox party, not committed to closure of settlements and might later leave the administration
Pensioners’ party 7 seats
Backing Olmert’s plan in return for ministry dedicated to pensioners – Guardian Unlimited Â