Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert began building a coalition yesterday after winning Israel's election on plans to impose final borders with the Palestinians by uprooting many West Bank settlements.
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 -- a remote prospect with Hamas Islamist militants taking office -- Olmert has vowed to set Israel's frontier by 2010 by removing isolated settlements in the occupied West Bank and expanding bigger blocs there.
Olmert's centrist Kadima party fared worse than expected, signaling he might struggle to sustain support for his plan. Kadima's showing of 28 seats in the 120-member parliament was among the lowest for an election winner.
But 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.
"I think we can run a government with 28 seats. It will be difficult, but possible," elder statesman and senior Kadima politician Shimon Peres said on Army Radio.
Besides Kadima, election results showed center-left Labour with 20 seats, the ultra-Orthodox Shas with 13, ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu with 12 and right-wing Likud with 11. Opinion polls had originally predicted Kadima would win 44 seats.
Kadima, founded just four months ago, was expected to seek a coalition with Labour and small parties in talks expected to last for weeks. Some religious parties and one representing pensioners could back his West Bank plan.
Maya Jacobs, a Kadima spokeswoman, said unofficial coalition talks with leading parties including Labour had begun.
Palestinians condemn Olmert's West Bank plans as denying them a viable state.
The sweeping measures would uproot tens of thousands of Jewish settlers while tracing a border along a fortified barrier Israel is building inside the West Bank.
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," Olmert said.
If the Palestinians did not move towards peace, he said, "Israel will take its destiny in hand" and set final borders.
Olmert's unilateral approach appeals to many Israelis worn down by a five-year-old Palestinian uprising and worried by the rise to power of Hamas, which is sworn to destroy Israel.
Some 60,000 West Bank settlers could be affected by Olmert's plan, far more than the 8,500 removed from Gaza last year. Some 240,000 Israelis live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The trauma for settlers of any withdrawal could dwarf that of the Gaza evacuation which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had championed in a reversal of policy. Sharon founded Kadima before suffering a stroke in January that sent him into a coma.
European leaders gave a cautious welcome to Kadima's victory, and urged the country's new government to restart peace talks with the Palestinians.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who called Olmert to offer congratulations, said Kadima's victory "changes the shape of Israeli politics."
"I look forward to meeting him soon to discuss his plans to take the peace process forward," Blair said in a statement released by his 10 Downing Street office. "I urge all parties to pursue a path of positive engagement as set out by the Quartet" -- the EU, the US, the UN and Russia.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the result was "good news for peace."
The Times of London hailed the "extraordinary" result as a step toward moderation.
In an editorial, it said that "when the Palestinian election produced the extreme result of a Hamas victory, many thought that the Israeli electorate would react by lurching back to Likud, led by the unpredictable Binyamin Netanyahu. It has not done so."
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