Jericho raid gives Olmert pre-election boost -polls

JERUSALEM, Mar 16: Israel's seizure of a radical Palestinian leader in a prison raid boosted interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in opinion polls published today ahead of a March 28 election they predict he will win.

In fresh violence in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli soldier involved in a raid to capture militants in the city of Jenin, and militants shot and wounded two Israeli motorists near a Jewish settlement.

Pointing to a ''Jericho effect'', a survey on Army Radio gave Olmert's front-running Kadima party 43 seats in the 120-member parliament, a six-seat jump which the poll attributed to public support for Tuesday's operation in the West Bank city.

Opinion polls in several newspapers predicted a smaller increase, to 38 or 39 seats, for centrist Kadima following the day-long assault in which Israeli forces seized Ahmed Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Support for Kadima had slipped slightly in recent weeks after a sympathy surge that followed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's crippling stroke on January. 4, which left him in a coma.

According to the new polls, the centre-left Labour Party and right-wing Likud were showing no sign of gaining momentum ahead of election day. Both parties remained relatively stable with about 19 seats for Labour and 15 for Likud.

The Jericho raid, following the pullout of foreign monitors supervising Saadat's incarceration under a 2002 deal that ended an Israeli siege of Yasser Arafat's West Bank compound, was widely seen as having burnished Olmert's security credentials.

Israel accuses Saadat of ordering the 2001 assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi. The PFLP said it killed Zeevi to avenge Israel's killing of one of its leaders.

The PFLP and Hamas, winner of the Jan. 25 Palestinian election, have vowed to take revenge for the prison raid.

UNILATERAL MOVES The latest opinion polls were also the first taken after Olmert said last week he planned to set Israel's permanent borders unilaterally by 2010 by uprooting isolated settlements and expanding major enclaves unless the militant Islamist Hamas movement renounced violence and recognised the Jewish state.

Olmert has pledged an uncomprising fight against militants.

ln the Jenin operation, the army said it detained five wanted Palestinians. Palestinian security sources said four of the men belonged to al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of the Fatah movement, and one was a member of Islamic Jihad.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a visit to Australia, urged Israel and the Palestinians to exercise ''calm and restraint'' following the prison raid that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned as an unforgivable crime.

The seizure of Saadat, 51, was another headache for Abbas, already shaken by the election victory of Hamas, which is preparing to head a new government.

Hamas has courted Abbas's Fatah faction in hope of forming a governing coalition. It has rejected Fatah calls to abandon violence and accept peacemaking with Israel.

Fatah and Hamas were expected to reconvene for talks on Thursday.

But signalling that the impasse might not be bridged, a Hamas spokesman said his group, formally sworn to the Jewish state's destruction, would make a ''final offer'' to Fatah.

REUTERS