Olmert wins backing of Israelis for border plan

Acting Prime Minister and Kadima leader Ehud Olmert (C) celebrates election win with former prime minister Shimon Peres (R ) who congratulates Olmert's wife Aliza during celebrations early yesterday at the temporary Kadima meeting point set up outside Jerusalem in Neve Ilan. PHOTO: AFP

Appealing to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Olmert said in a post-election speech that Israel was ready to live alongside the Palestinians in peace after decades of conflict.

But in the absence of peace talks -- now remote with the Islamist militant group Hamas about to take office -- Olmert has vowed to set Israel's frontier by 2010 by removing isolated West Bank settlements while expanding bigger blocs there.

Olmert's centrist Kadima party fared worse than expected in Tuesday's parliamentary election, signalling he might struggle to sustain support for his historic plan.

However, some political analysts said Olmert should be able to stitch together a coalition that would avoid the need to negotiate with right-wing parties opposed to any withdrawal from West Bank land that settlers see as a biblical birthright.

Palestinians say such go-it-alone moves, sweeping measures that would uproot tens of thousands of Jewish settlers while tracing a border along a fortified barrier Israel is building inside the West Bank, would deny them a viable state.

With votes counted from 99.5 percent of polling stations, official results showed Kadima with 28 seats in the 120-member parliament, centre-left Labour with 20, the ultra-Orthodox Shas with 13, ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu with 12 and right-wing Likud with 11.

Opinion polls had once predicted Kadima would win 44 seats.

Olmert said Jews had aspired for thousands of years to create a homeland throughout the Land of Israel, biblical territory that includes the West Bank.

"But acknowledging reality and circumstances, we are ready to compromise, to give up parts of the beloved Land of Israel ... and evacuate, with great pain, Jews living there, to create the conditions that will enable you to fulfil your dream and live alongside us," Olmert said.

If the Palestinians did not move toward peace, he said, "Israel will take its destiny in hand" and set permanent borders after lobbying the United States and others for support.

Abbas, who wants a two-state solution but has been weakened by Hamas's victory in elections in January, said the election would make no difference unless Olmert abandoned unilateralism.

"This result will not change (anything) as long as the agenda of Olmert himself does not change and he does not abandon the question of unilateral agreements," Abbas said in Khartoum.

Kadima was expected to seek a coalition with Labour and a clutch of small parties ranging from ultra-Orthodox Jewish factions to a pensioners' rights group.

"On the face of it, Olmert can form a coalition of 80 seats within a month. The question is how far can he go with such a government?" wrote Yossi Verter, a political analyst for the Haaretz newspaper.