A Decisive Election

Israelis overwhelmingly vote to withdraw from the occupied West Bank.

AN ELECTION cast as a historic referendum over whether to redraw the borders of Israel produced a curious reaction from voters Tuesday: the lowest turnout in history, coupled with a surge of support for small parties focused on domestic issues. That may mean Israelis are uninspired by the man who will now become their prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who stepped in after Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke in January. Or it may mean that many Israelis already assumed what the election results showed: that the debate over whether to give up most of the West Bank and its Jewish settlements is over.

Though Mr. Olmert's Kadima party won fewer parliamentary seats than it hoped for, up to two-thirds of the new Knesset will probably support a West Bank withdrawal. That doesn't mean it will happen in the next four years; this is still the Middle East. But the Israeli parties that favor holding on to all of the remaining occupied territories and settlements were devastated by the election. The Likud Party, which governed Israel for most of the past 30 years and pursued the cause of a "greater Israel" during most of that time, won only 11 of the 120 Knesset seats; even among right-wing parties, it took second place to one that favors a territorial separation of Israelis and Palestinians. Mr. Olmert should have little trouble forming a coalition, though he may have to agree to some big government spending on social programs and pensions.

The pullout that Mr. Olmert favors, and that he boldly outlined before the election, won't take place anytime soon. First, the new government will have to complete the system of fences and walls it is building through the western edge of the West Bank and around Jerusalem; that may take a year. During that time, Mr. Olmert will probably hold to a stated policy that a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, as envisioned by President Bush's "road map," is still possible. But negotiation would require either a radical change of position by the Hamas government that took office yesterday in the Palestinian Authority, or its early collapse under Israeli and international pressure. In the meantime, Israel will still exchange blows with Palestinian militants, who fired a Katyusha rocket this week from Gaza into Israel for the first time.

In the absence of Palestinian movement, Mr. Olmert then will seek the support of the Bush administration for a unilateral withdrawal. As the new prime minister sees it, this could involve the removal of some 70,000 Jewish settlers from the West Bank, but also the de facto annexation of other large settlements to Israel, along with 10 percent of the West Bank's land. Such a large Israeli withdrawal would be a major practical step toward a Middle East settlement. But the United States would be bound to ensure that the new border made possible the eventual creation of a viable Palestinian state and that it strengthened rather than weakened Palestinian alternatives to Hamas. Managing that diplomacy may well emerge as one of the greatest opportunities, and challenges, of President Bush's second term.