Middle East: Israel's right-wing Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out joining interim prime minister Ehud Olmert in a future government yesterday, in protest at Mr Olmert's planned unilateral West Bank withdrawals.
The pledge bolstered speculation that Mr Olmert's centrist Kadima Party, predicted to win March 28th elections, would team up with the centre-left Labor Party for a coalition robust enough to withdraw from some occupied land in the face of ultranationalist opposition.
Mr Netanyahu quit prime minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet in protest at last year's Gaza Strip withdrawal, calling it a capitulation to Palestinian violence. Mr Olmert, who assumed Mr Sharon's powers after his stroke on January 4th, has promised similar moves in the West Bank should peace talks remain stalled.
"Certainly we will not be able to sit in a government predicated along these lines," Mr Netanyahu, a former prime minister, told Israel's Maariv newspaper.
Palestinians want all of the West Bank and Gaza, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, for a state. Many Israeli rightists consider the land a Jewish biblical birthright.
Mr 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 25th, renounced violence and recognised the Jewish state. Hamas has so far refused to do so.
Even under a peace accord, Mr Olmert has said, Israel will keep major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. Such future de facto annexations have been endorsed by Labor and Likud, but condemned by Palestinians as imperilling peace efforts.
A survey commissioned by Israel's army radio projected Kadima winning 37 of parliament's 120 seats in the upcoming poll, with Labor a distant second at 18. Likud trailed at 16 seats.