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Ehud Olmert embraces number two Shimon Peres (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners March 29, 2006 |
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Real election results showed acting PM Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party dropping to 28 seats, followed by Labor at 20, the Shas right-leaning religious party at 13, upstart Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beitenu nationalist party at 12, Netanyahu's right-center Likud at 11, and the right-religious National Union-NRP at 9. Despite the disappointing showing, Olmert should be able to handily assemble a coalition government in the coming weeks.
Polls had predicted that that Kadima, formed by Ariel Sharon before his devastating Jan. 4 stroke, would win 34-35 seats, after peaking at over 44.
The center-left Labor Party, a likely coalition partner for Olmert, came in a relatively strong second. The hardline Likud, which dominated Israeli politics for three decades and opposes Olmert's plan to withdraw from much of the West Bank, came in a distant fifth, and may mark the end of Netanyahu's leadership.
Taking its place as the leading right-center party is Israel Beiteinu, which would like to redraw Israel borders to put fewer Arabs and more Jews inside, which posted an impressive double-digit showing as expected, with 12-14 seats. The party had only two lawmakers in the outgoing parliament.
"Kadima has won today. The next prime minister is Ehud Olmert," said Sharon loyalist Roni Bar-On, a Kadima legislator.
A pensioners' party appeared to be the surprise protest vote of the election, taking eight seats. The party was seem as a natural coalition partner for Olmert.
The party is led by Rafi Eitan, a former senior intelligence agent, who served as the "handler" of imprisoned spy Jonathan Pollard. Although Pollard supporters protested during his victory speech, there has been speculation that Eitan's guilt feelings may pressure Olmert to finally take action to bring Pollard home. Today another key figure in the Pollard case, arch-antagonist Caspar Weinberger, died.
The vote was billed as a historic referendum on Olmert's vision of the future of the West Bank after 39 years of military occupation, although the results -- with less than a quarter of the electorate supporting him -- turned out to be less than decisive.
Under Olmert's plan, Israel's partially completed separation barrier, expected to encompas about 8 percent of the area of Judea and Samaria, would become the new border within four years, with some minor alterations. Settlement blocs on the "Israeli" side of the barrier would be beefed up, while tens of thousands of settlers living on the other side would be uprooted and gathered into the blocs.
"We will determine the line of the security fence, and we will make sure that no Jewish settlements will be left on the other side of the fence. Drawing the final borders is our obligation as leaders and as a society," Olmert wrote Tuesday in an op-ed piece published in the Yediot Ahronot daily.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Islamic militant group would resist Olmert's plan. "We view this plan as a very dangerous one because it represents a real liquiditation of the Palestinian cause," said Abu Zuhri.
In Israel's electoral system, the leader of the largest party is traditionally asked first to try to form a ruling coalition.
But because he hasn't won close to an outright majority, Olmert will need allies to govern. The exit polls suggested a core alliance with Labor, the leftist Meretz and possibly the pensioners would be the easiest to achieve.
Olmert's idea of unilateral action gained support after Hamas militants who don't recognize Israel's right to exist won Palestinian parliamentary elections in January. The Palestinian parliament approved the Hamas Cabinet in a 71-36 vote Tuesday, sending it to Abbas for final approval later this week.
Israel began the "disengagement" process last summer with its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, but Tuesday's vote marked the first time the leading candidate has laid out a concrete vision for the future of Judea and Samaria, captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
"This is perhaps the most important election in all of Israel's life," said Mordechai Aviv, 76, of Jerusalem. "We are going to separate between us and the Arabs. This is very important for us to continue having a Jewish state."
Election Day is a state holiday in Israel, where many of the 8,276 polling stations serving 4.5 million voters are set up in schools. By 8 p.m. (1800 GMT), 57 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballots, or 6.5 percentage points below levels from the same time during the nation's last election, in 2003.
Security was extremely tight, with some 22,000 police and border police patrolling Israel's frontier with the West Bank, particularly around Jerusalem. The military had sealed off the West Bank and Gaza two weeks earlier, barring all Palestinians to prevent possible militant attacks.
On Tuesday morning, Palestinian militants for the first time fired a longer-range Russian-made Katyusha rocket from Gaza into Israel, and security officials said the precedent was very worrisome.
Katyushas can reach larger Israeli towns near Gaza, and are far deadlier than the homemade Qassam rockets militants have fired in the last five years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. The rocket fell in an open area and caused no injuries.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, attending the Arab Summit in Sudan, appealed to voters to back candidates who support a peace deal. "We hope that the Israeli voters will direct their vote to peace, for parliament members who are looking for peace, who want peace, because there is no future for us and for them, there is no security for us and for them without peace," he told The Associated Press.
Abbas was to return to the region Wednesday to swear in the new Hamas Cabinet, which won Palestinian parliament approval Tuesday.
As Israeli voters cast ballots, a Bedouin shepherd and his 16-year-old son were killed in an explosion near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, caused by an unexploded shell or rocket lying in a field, the military said. The Islamic Jihad group initially claimed it caused the blast by firing a rocket into Israel to disrupt the election.
In a separate incident, two Bedouin teens were killed and a third critically wounded while handling an unexploded shell on a firing range of the Israeli military in the southern Negev Desert.
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Here is the breakdown of results in Israel's election, with 99.7 percent of polling stations accounted for, in the 120-seat parliament:
Kadima 28
Labor 20
Shas 13
Yisrael Beitenu 12
Likud 11
National Union-National Religious Party 9
Pensioners 7
Torah Judaism 6
Meretz 4
Raam-Tal 4
Balad 3
Hadash 3
The AP contributed to this report.
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