AS ISRAELIS approach parliamentary elections next week, they face a rare and welcome prospect: the likelihood that a relatively stable governing coalition may be formed of parties that constitute a solid majority of the Knesset's 120 members. But as usual in the Middle East, there is a complicating factor. With the Islamist movement Hamas holding its own solid majority in the Palestinian Authority legislature, a situation may soon arise in which two elected governments with stable majorities will behave as though neither has a partner for the peace negotiations that large majorities of both peoples desire.
Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has been candid about the unilateral withdrawals from select West Bank settlements that his Kadima Party plans to carry out. He has talked of giving some 70,000 Israelis in those settlements the option of being absorbed into three large West Bank settlements which he intends to retain, and even enlarge, within borders he would establish unilaterally and hope to make permanent.
''This is not an election gimmick,’ Olmert said of his withdrawal plan in a recent TV interview. He was responding to Avigdor Lieberman, leader of a right-wing party that has been considered a potential coalition partner. Lieberman had said he would not support what Olmert calls his ''convergence plan’ -- meaning that displaced Israeli settlers could converge into the larger settlements he plans to annex to Israel. Olmert said of his plan: ''Whoever doesn't support it cannot be a partner in a coalition I establish.’
Olmert's firmness in response to rightist objections against further withdrawals from occupied territory may reflect needed leadership qualities. But his attachment to the notion of unilaterally imposing permanent territorial divisions on the Palestinians denies unpleasant truths.
Olmert's Kadima Party has been polling an impressive Knesset plurality of at least 36 seats, in large part because of the legacy of Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. The polls indicate that the Israeli public has lost patience with criticism of the Gaza withdrawal by Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of a right-wing Likud Party that was projected to win a mere 14 seats in a recent voter survey. But Gaza is not the West Bank, and Olmert's scheme for drawing defensible permanent borders for Israel cannot bring Israelis the peace and security they want and need.
Israelis need borders that are recognized internationally, and for that they will have to negotiate a peace agreement with the Palestinians. This may not be the right time for such a negotiation, but it is better to be patient and wait for the right time than to fall for the illusion that Israel can now impose its own one-sided solution.