Israel's Netanyahu rules out govt pact with Olmert
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-03-12 14:31

Israel's right-wing Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday ruled out joining a future government led by interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in protest at planned unilateral West Bank withdrawals.

Hamas' exiled leader Khaled Meshaal(L) speaks during an interview with AFP at his residence in Damascus on 09 March. A visiting Hamas delegation said that it had been assured of Saudi Arabia's continued political and financial support despite US-led moves to isolate the militant group following its upset victory in Palestinian elections. [AFP]

The remarks bolstered speculation that Olmert's centrist Kadima Party, expected to win March 28 elections, would team up with center-left Labour for a coalition robust enough to quit occupied land in the face of Jewish ultranationalist opposition.

Netanyahu has come out against Olmert's pledges to withdraw from parts of the West Bank in the absence of peace talks with the Palestinians, calling this a capitulation to violence.

"Certainly we will not be able to sit in a government predicated along these lines," Netanyahu, a former prime minister, told Israel's Maariv newspaper.

Palestinians want all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, for a state. Many Israeli rightists consider the land a Jewish biblical birthright.

Netanyahu quit as Israeli finance minister shortly before last year's withdrawal from Gaza, which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon billed as breaking a deadlock with the Palestinians.

Likud is trailing behind Kadima and Labour in opinion polls, but political analysts say its prospects could be boosted by any resurgence of a Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000.

Olmert said in interviews published last week he planned to impose permanent Israeli borders by 2010 unless Hamas, an Islamic militant group that swept Palestinian elections on January 25, renounced violence and recognized the Jewish state.

Hamas has so far refused to do so.

Under any agreed accord, Olmert has said, Israel would keep major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. This pledge has been endorsed by both Labour and Likud. Palestinians say it would spell the end of peacemaking efforts.