MIDEAST: Exit poll results indicate Israeli Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party set to win parliamentary election

Record ID: 858637

  • Title: MIDEAST: Exit poll results indicate Israeli Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party set to win parliamentary election
  • Date: 29th March 2006
  • Summary: (BN15) NEVE ILAN, ISRAEL (MARCH 28, 2006) (REUTERS) WIDE VIEW OF KADIMA PARTY ELECTION HEADQUARTERS VIDEO SCREENS SHOWING NEWSCASTS AND ELECTION RESULTS WOMAN WATCHING SCREEN AND TAKING NOTES MAN ON MOBILE PHONE WATCHING RESULTS WOMAN WATCHING SCREENS AND WRITING RESULTS WIDE VIEW OF HEADQUARTERS WITH PEOPLE AND MEDIA GATHERED
  • Embargoed: 13th April 2006 13:00
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  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVADN98OV3LN77OL9T3YQQHYERWI
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  • Story Text: Exit polls in Israel's elections on Tuesday (March 28) showed Israeli interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party set to win an election on Tuesday seen as a referendum on the future of the occupied West Bank.
    Olmert aims, in the absence of progress towards peace, to impose a border on the Palestinians by dismantling isolated Jewish settlements in the West Bank by 2010 and expanding bigger blocs in the territory.
    Palestinians say such go-it-alone moves, sweeping measures that would uproot tens of thousands of settlers while tracing a frontier along a fortified barrier Israel is building inside the West Bank, would deny them a viable state.
    Exit polls broadcast by Israeli media after voting ended gave Kadima 29-32 seats in the 120-member parliament, putting it in a good position to form a governing coalition.
    The polls forecast centre-left Labour would receive 20-22 seats, the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party 13-14 and, in a sharp setback for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his right-wing Likud was projected to get only about 12 seats.
    Unilateralism 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.
    The crowd at Labour party's election night headquarters was jubilant.
    "The Labour Party according to this poll - all the three polls - has a better result than we had three years ago. I think that's a good result. I think it will be possible to make a coalition, but all that we'll have to see in the future. We'll see the final result," Labour Party member Michael Malchior said.
    "We gained 22 seats, which is a largest - a larger number than the largest we gained in any of the (pre-election) polls," Labour Party member Ehud Yatom said.
    Near-final election results should be available early on Wednesday.
    For Olmert, victory would mean approval of "consolidation," his term for the unilateral steps he plans should Hamas refuse to recognise Israel, disarm and accept interim peace accords.
    The trauma for Israeli settlers on the West Bank of any withdrawal from land they see as a biblical birthright could dwarf that of last year's Gaza pullout, which then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon championed in a reversal of policy.
    Sharon founded Kadima last November after bolting Likud, where far-right members revolted over the Gaza withdrawal. He suffered a stroke in January and fell into a coma.
    Some 60,000 West Bank settlers could be affected by Olmert's plan, far more than the 8,500 removed from Gaza. Around 240,000 Israelis live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
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