Kadima set to win Israeli election: exit polls

A supporter of the Kadima party waves an Israeli flag in front of a poster of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the party's headquarters in Newe Ilan, March 28, 2006. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
 

Tue Mar 28, 2006

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party was on course to win an election on Tuesday with a plan to impose a border on the Palestinians if peacemaking remains frozen, exit polls showed.

Polls broadcast by Israeli media after voting ended gave the centrist Kadima 29-32 seats in the 120-member parliament, less than expected but still a first-place result that would put it in position to form a governing coalition.

"I am satisfied with the results, although we could have gotten more," Olmert told aides, according to Israeli media.

"Kadima will run the next government and Ehud Olmert (will be) the elected prime minister of Israel," party candidate Roni Bar-On said.

In the absence of progress toward peace, Olmert aims to set Israel's final frontier by 2010 by removing isolated settlements in the occupied West Bank while expanding bigger blocs there.

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

The exit polls forecast centre-left Labour, a likely partner for the recently formed Kadima, would receive 20-22 seats and the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party 13-14.

In a sharp setback for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his right-wing Likud was projected to get only about 12 seats.

Netanyahu announced he was staying on as Likud chief, a post he regained only three months ago after then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon quit the party amid an internal revolt over Israel's Gaza pullout. Sharon founded Kadima before suffering a stroke in January that sent him into a coma.

Near-final results should be available early on Wednesday.

Olmert's unilateral approach appeals to many Israelis worn down by a five-year-old Palestinian uprising and concerned by the rise to power of Hamas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the Islamist militant group won elections in January. Continued ...