What do the election results mean for the Middle East? Why was the voter turnout so low? asap spoke to AP Jerusalem News Editor Karin Laub to find out.
Israeli Labor Party leader Amir Peretz, after casting his vote. (AP Photo/Edi Israel, pool)
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party looks to have emerged a winner in Israel's election, but a record-low voter turnout may have hindered his plans to build a coalition and finalize Israeli's permanent borders by 2010.
With results in from 99 percent of the polling stations, Kadima was winning 28 seats. The Labor Party, which also wants to negotiate with the Palestinians, finished second with 20 seats, while the old hard-line Likud regime picked up 11 seats.
Despite Olmert's plans to withdraw from most of the West Bank and allow Palestinians to have a state, Hamas again said it would resist plans to finalize Israeli borders. In order to get a grasp on Tuesday's election results, asap spoke to AP Jerusalem news editor KARIN LAUB.
What accounted for the record-low turnout?
Laub: Many Israeli voters seemed either indifferent or confused by new choices they had to make, because this is the first Israeli election in which the split between two political camps -- a right wing that wants to keep most of the West Bank and a left wing that wants to give up most of that territory -- no longer exists. Instead there is a centrist Kadima party that advocates a compromise and says let's give up a large part of the West Bank, draw Israel's final borders and dismantle many, but not all, of the Jewish settlements.
Was it any surprise that Hamas plans to resist Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plan to establish permanent borders?
Laub: Hamas was not expected to have much to do with the new Israeli government in any case. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has also said he would have no dealings with the Hamas government. So Hamas was reiterating a position by saying that it does not like Olmert's plan to draw Israel's final borders by 2010. Hamas says the minimum the Palestinians demand is a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem -- the territories Israel captured in the 1967 war.
If Hamas continues to not recognize the Israeli state, will this election or Olmert's future plans have any effect on the peace process?
Laub: There is a third plan in all of this and that is the moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. His spokesman said from Sudan, where Abbas is attending an Arab summit, that the Palestinian president is ready and willing to immediately resume negotiations with the new Israeli government. Many Israelis hope that if Olmert goes through with his plan, he may not end the conflict with the Palestinians but certainly take out some of the friction. There's a growing majority in Israel in favor of a separation from most of the Palestinians, and that separation would significantly reduce friction between the two sides after five years of bloody fighting.
One of the 31 parties competing sought to legalize pot. What happened to that group?
Laub: A party that seeks to legalize marijuana did not cross the threshold of the minimum 2 percent of the vote. You were deeply concerned about that, I'm sure.
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