Israel's final borders at stake in today's vote

Polls hand the victory to Kadima, but the future depends on the extent of the electoral triumph of the party set up by Sharon. More than five million voters are eligible to cast their vote.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews/Agencies) –Israel's final borders are at stake in the election to choose 120 members of the 17th Knesset (parliament) since the foundation of the state in 1948. Around 8,276 polling booths have been open to cater for more than five million voters, exactly 5,014,622, since 7am, and they will remain so until 10pm, at which point 500 polling stations will start to work out the result of the vote.

Representatives of the big parties have already cast their votes and the President of the Republic, Moshe Katsav, has appealed to people to follow suit: According to recent surveys, many Israelis have demonstrated indifference about the election.

There are 31 lists in the running, but the struggle to form a new government will involve above all the centre Kadima, founded by Sharon and now led by Ehud Olmert, his successor also running the government, the Labour party of Amir Peretz, the trade unionist who beat the "old lion", Shimon Peres, who then went to Ladina, and the conservative Likud of Benyamin Netanyahu. Under the Israeli electoral system, parties with less than 2% of votes are barred from representation in parliament.

Felled by a stroke on 18 December, the true protagonist of the election, Ariel Sharon, is not running. In the Council of Ministers, Olmert has refused to occupy his empty chair, the website of the party he founded still goes by the name of kadimasharon.co.il/ and his image has appeared on all the electoral programmes.

If polls predicting the election outcome are correct, Olmert will be called to form a new government, but he will need allies. The first to be sounded out will be Peretz's Labour party and the Shas pacifists, who are agree with Olmert's project for a unilateral withdrawal from a large part of the Cisjordan. A daily newspaper, Haaretz, has speculated about the possibility of an alliance between the ultra-Orthodox of the UTJ and Meretz, but this would complicate the withdrawal plan. The improbable hypothesis of a national unity government that also includes Likud has been mooted by some Israeli analysts: this scenario would make the future of the project totally uncertain.

Ultimately, everything hinges on the extent of Kadima's victory, which all polls say is certain.

• israel
• ELECTION
• BORDERS
• withdrawal
• unilateral
• kadima
• likud
• labour
• sharon
• olmert
• peretz