Israelis brace for a rough election fight

JERUSALEM - Israel moved closer yesterday to a bruising election campaign that would decide the future of peace talks, as polls showed Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, considered a moderate, in a surprisingly close race with hard-line opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Neither of Israel's two leading political parties would have enough seats to form a government on its own, according to the surveys, which also showed an even split between the country's hawkish and center-left blocs. That signals more deadlock in peacemaking with Syria and the Palestinians.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad expressed concern yesterday that precious time was running out, "although I still have hope that we can find a solution through negotiation."

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were relaunched nearly a year ago at a U.S.-hosted summit, at which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas set a December 2008 target for clinching a final accord. Both leaders since have acknowledged there will be no deal by year's end.

President Shimon Peres began the countdown to new elections at the opening of the winter session of parliament, a day after Livni had given up on her efforts to form a governing coalition.

Peres said elections were inevitable after consulting with Israel's other political parties and concluding that no one had the support to form a government. Parliament now has three weeks to dissolve itself. The election, Israel's third in six years, would take place three months later.

Olmert, who is being forced from office by a series of corruption investigations, said he would remain in office as a caretaker in the meantime.

Peres appealed to the parties to work together. "The coming elections can raise Israel up and release it from its various weaknesses," he said.

But almost immediately, signs of division were evident.

Speaking to the same session, Netanyahu unofficially launched his campaign by staking out hard-line positions on peace talks with Syria and the Palestinians.

If he were elected, Netanyahu said, Israel would keep "defensible borders." He also pledged to retain the Golan Heights, a stance that would make an Israel-Syria agreement impossible. Israel captured the Golan, a strategic plateau overlooking northern Israel, in the 1967 Mideast war.

Netanyahu also said that Israel would have to keep large areas of the West Bank as part of any agreement with the Palestinians, and that all of Jerusalem would remain in Israeli hands.

"We will not negotiate over Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people for the past 3,000 years," said Netanyahu, who was prime minister in the late 1990s. The speech drew repeated heckling by dovish and Arab lawmakers.

Livni, Israel's chief peace negotiator with the Palestinians during the last year, says Israel must find a settlement to all remaining issues, including Jerusalem.