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Israeli vote endorse west bank withdrawal { February 2006 }

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   http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1777017

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1777017

Israeli Vote Key to Future of West Bank
Israeli Vote Expected to Endorse Plan to Separate From Most Palestinians After 39 Years
By JOSEF FEDERMAN
The Associated Press

JERUSALEM Mar 28, 2006 (AP)—
JERUSALEM - Israelis voted Tuesday in an election billed as a referendum on the future of the West Bank, with the leading candidate, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, promising to pull back from most of the territory and draw Israel's final borders by 2010.

Barring an unexpected surge by hawkish parties, Israelis were expected to give a green light to Olmert's proposal to separate from most Palestinians after 39 years of military occupation.

About 47 percent of the 4.5 million eligible voters had cast ballots by 11 a.m. EST, the Central Elections Committee said. That was about 7 percentage points lower than at the same time in the 2003 national elections.

Analysts have said low turnout could hurt the prospects of Olmert's front-running Kadima Party.

The election was held the same day the Palestinian parliament overwhelming approved the new Hamas Cabinet, setting the stage for the new administration to take office later this week. Lawmakers belonging to the Islamic militant group chanted "God is great!" after the 71-36 vote. Two parliamentarians abstained.

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 the West Bank.

"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.

As Israelis voted, a Bedouin shepherd and his 16-year-old son were killed in an explosion near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, caused by a shell or rocket lying in a field, the military said.

The Islamic Jihad militant group initially claimed responsibility, saying the attack was timed to disrupt the Israeli election. In the past, Palestinian violence has driven Israeli voters toward hard-line parties.

Rafi Friedman, a resident of the Tel Aviv suburb of Kochav Yair, voted as soon as the polls opened before rushing off to the airport for a business trip.

"Voting is not just a right. It's a duty," he said.

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 sealed off the West Bank and Gaza two weeks ago, barring all Palestinians to prevent possible militant attacks.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, attending an 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.

Pollsters predicted that the centrist Kadima, founded in November by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, would finish well ahead of the center-left Labor Party and the right-wing Likud. However, an unusually large number of voters said they were undecided, and pollsters said large fluctuations were possible.

Success for Kadima has been defined as winning at least 35 of 120 seats in parliament. The party, which Olmert took over after Sharon lapsed into a coma following a Jan. 4 stroke, has been polling around 34 seats in recent days, down several seats from the start of the campaign.

In Israel's electoral system, the leader of the largest party is asked first to form a ruling coalition. No party has ever won a majority in parliament.

Olmert has said he would only invite parties that back his plan, but he might be forced to seek other allies if Kadima wins fewer seats than expected. Labor, which favors territorial concessions, was expected to win about 20 seats, and Likud, which wants to keep most of the West Bank, was polling at 14.

Israel captured the West Bank, home to about 2.5 million Palestinians, in the 1967 Mideast War.

Under Olmert's plan, Israel's partially completed West Bank separation barrier, expected to swallow about 8 percent of the area, would become the new border within four years, with some 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 from their homes.

"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.

Olmert, joined by his wife, Aliza, voted near his Jerusalem home.

Thirty-one parties were competing, including about two dozen with narrow agendas focusing on pensioner rights, legalization of marijuana and parties for the ultra-Orthodox. About a dozen parties were expected to clear the 2 percent-of-the-vote threshold to enter parliament.

Raheli London, 18, of Jerusalem, planned to support the ultra-Orthodox Aguda Yisrael party at the behest of religious leaders.

"All the rabbis send me to them, so I vote for them," she said.

Olmert's idea of unilateral action gained support after Hamas won January's legislative elections. Hamas officials said the election results would have no effect on their hostility toward Israel.

"We are not differentiating between this party and that," said Mahmoud Zahar, the incoming Palestinian foreign minister. "All of them committed crimes against the Palestinian people."

During the campaign, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu had warned that unilateral pullbacks simply bring Hamas closer to Israel, and Labor leader Amir Peretz complained that the Kadima approach kills prospects for peace talks. Peretz, a former union leader, also has promised to narrow the growing gap between rich and poor.

Peretz voted in his hometown of Sderot, a working-class community in the southern Negev Desert.

Netanyahu voted in Jerusalem, saying Likud "can best guarantee our future in terms of security and the economy."

Sharon's main legacy was to plant the idea that Israel need not wait for a formal peace treaty to separate from the Palestinians. His stand-in, Olmert, has positioned himself as the man most likely to make that happen.

"Olmert did what Sharon would not have done on the eve of elections: He told the voters what he intends to do," columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in Yediot.

"He turned these elections into a referendum on the future of Judea and Samaria," he added, using the biblical terms for the West Bank.

Right-wing parties, aligned with religious forces, hoped to form a "blocking majority" of 60 seats to prevent Olmert from following through.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures



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