Israeli media: Kadima wins at polls (CNN.com) [View All]

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 Posted: 0454 GMT (1254 HKT)

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's 4-month-old centrist Kadima party took the largest share of parliamentary seats in elections Tuesday, according to Israeli media.

The party, formed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon late last year when he broke from the Likud bloc he helped form in the 1970s, earned 28 seats, giving Kadima the most seats in the 120-member Knesset.

The Israeli media were reporting early Wednesday that with 99.5 percent of the vote counted, Tuesday's other big winners were the Labor party with 20 seats; Shas, a party comprising ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Jews, with 13 seats; Yisrael Beitenu with 12 seats; and Likud with 11.

At a victory rally Wednesday after the exit poll declared Kadima the winner, Olmert reiterated his promise to define Israel's borders in the next four years -- with or without Palestinian input -- by evacuating small Jewish settlements in the West Bank and annexing larger ones.

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http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/03/28/israel.election/index.html