Israelis are voting today an election seen as a referendum on uprooting some West Bank settlements while enlarging others to impose Israel's final borders if peacemaking with the Palestinians stays frozen.
Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose centrist Kadima party is expected to win, aims unilaterally to dismantle remote settlements by 2010 and move thousands of dislodged settlers to bigger blocs on occupied land Palestinians want for a state.
An Israeli Bedouin man stands behind a voting booth as he casts his ballot at a polling station near Rahat.
But turnout after a few hours of voting was 21.7 per cent of registered voters, the lowest in any Israel election since 2001.
Some 20,000 police and volunteers were on patrol for possible Palestinian bombings as Israelis voted.
Opinion polls have shown Kadima will win some 34 seats, enough to form a governing coalition in the 120-member parliament. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon founded Kadima last November before he suffered a stroke and went into a coma.
In southern Israel today, two Israeli Arab shepherds were killed in a suspected rocket attack from Gaza, medics said.
Israelis were voting a day after Hamas presented its cabinet to the Palestinian parliament for approval, showing no sign of softening its stance on the Jewish state. Hamas is formally sworn to Israel's destruction.
Surveys published at the end of a lacklustre election campaign forecast the centre-left Labour Party led by former trade union chief Amir Peretz will take second place, with about 21 seats, making it a likely coalition partner.
The right-wing Likud party, headed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was forecast to take some 14 seats. Media exit polls will be issued after balloting ends at 10pm local time.
For Mr Olmert, victory would mean approval of "consolidation", his term for the go-it-alone steps he plans should Hamas refuse to recognise Israel, disarm and accept interim peace accords.
The World Court has ruled that all settlements are illegal. Israel disputes this.
Palestinians condemn Mr Olmert's proposal, saying it would destroy any prospects for peace and deny them a viable state by grabbing land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
One senior Hamas official said all major Israeli political parties were hostile toward the Palestinians. "We will confront whatever is the result of the election by uniting against the occupier and against the Israeli aggression . . . by all possible means," said Mushir al-Masri.
The trauma for settlers of any withdrawal from land they see as a Biblical birthright could dwarf that of last year's Gaza pullout, which Mr Sharon championed in a reversal of policy. Some 60,000 West Bank settlers could be affected by Mr 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. Israeli right-wingers say removing more settlements would reward and encourage Palestinian violence.