ISRAEL: Israelis react with mixed emotions after acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declares victory in Israel's elections

Record ID: 858230

  • Title: ISRAEL: Israelis react with mixed emotions after acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declares victory in Israel's elections
  • Date: 29th March 2006
  • Summary: (BN04) TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (MARCH 28, 2006) (REUTERS) (NIGHT SHOTS) BIG SCREEN ON RABIN SQUARE ELECTION RESULTS ON SCREEN PEOPLE GATHERED TO WATCH ELECTION RESULTS (3 SHOTS) COUPLE WITH BABY BABY IN PUSH-CHAIR WITH KADIMA PARTY SIGN READING (Hebrew): "Yes, Kadima"
  • Embargoed: 13th April 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVACCA4PPB1NCYHLQHOB2Q0C6SIS
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  • Story Text: Israelis reacted with mixed emotions early on Wednesday (March 29) after the announcement of election results which declared Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party victorious.
    Crowds gathered overnight in Tel Aviv to watch the results on a big screen in Rabin Square.
    Kadima supporters were disappointed, saying the party of ailing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should have faired better in the polls.
    "I wanted Kadima to have more, but it's OK. It will be OK, I hope," one Kadima supporter, Yehuda, said.
    "I hope that they will have enough power to continue Arik (Ariel) Sharon's way and that everything for the country will be better and that it will be OK," he added.
    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.
    Israel's "Pensioners' Party" surprised the nation, getting seven seats.
    "The Senior Party (Pensioners' Party) got seven seats in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) and I think that it's a kind of sad joke they got it," one Tel Aviv resident said after hearing the results.
    In the absence of progress towards 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.
    Olmert, appealing in his speech to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Jews had aspired for thousands of years to create a homeland throughout the Land of Israel, biblical territory that includes the West Bank.
    The results were a sharp setback for the Likud's leader, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
    Netanyahu pledged to stay 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.
    Olmert's unilateral approach appeals to many Israelis worn down by a 5-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.
    But Kadima's showing, weaker than the 44 seats opinion polls had once predicted it would win, signalled that Olmert, a veteran politician short on charisma, could have trouble sustaining support for his dramatic plan.
    Kadima was also expected to seek a coalition with a clutch of small parties ranging from ultra-Orthodox Jewish factions to a pensioners' rights group.
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