Israeli voters started casting their ballots on Tuesday morning in general elections, seen as having massive impacts on Israel's politics and the prospects of the Mideast peace process.
Polls opened at 7 AM (05:00 GMT) sharp on Tuesday and will stay open until 10 PM (20:00 GMT).
Israeli Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose centrist Kadima party is tipped to win the most seats, was among the first to vote, casting his ballot in a polling station set up at a school in Jerusalem.
More than 3 million Israelis are expected to vote in around 8,200 voting booths to elect a new 120-member Knesset (Parliament). Since election regulations forbid publication of further polls on Monday, the first projection of the actual results will be released immediately after voting ends at 10:00 PM (20:00 GMT) Tuesday night. Final results will be made public within 14 days according to the Israeli Election Law.
Before the vote, Israeli media released final polls which show that much of the voting public remain undecided on Monday.
A poll conducted by newspaper Haaretz has centrist Kadima party polling at 36 seats, while polls by Maariv and Yedioth Ahronoth both predict Kadima to get 34. A Jerusalem Post poll estimates that Kadima will garner between 33 to 34 seats, while Labor, between 20 to 21 seats and Likud steady at 15.
According to Haaretz's poll, there are still 22 percent of the voting public that haven't made up their minds.
In a last-minute effort to encourage more people to vote, Israeli Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who heads the Kadima in Tuesday's polls, made an appeal for public during a cabinet meeting on Sunday.
"I call on all Israeli citizens to realize their right to participate in the elections and to vote. There is no more appropriate and significant expression of civil rights than of voting and thus determining the fate of the country and the composition of its government," said Olmert.
On the eve of the election day, polling firms are concerned by three main anomalies that could skew predictions -- low voter turnout, the high level of floating votes and the large numbers of youngsters on cellphones whom they can't poll by land line.
For politicians, the question of whom voters would elect on March 28 seemed less important than the issue of who would vote. Campaign officials from the three major parties -- centrist Kadima, left-wing Labor and right-wing Likud -- concurred that the popularity of last summer's disengagement set a new precedent that many parties began to re-evaluate their stances on territorial concessions. As a result, the platforms of the three parties have come to closely resemble one another and merge towards the center. The three rivals have focused their last-ditch campaigning on trying to woo the undecided voters.
Labor believes that many of these voters are former Labor supporters who abandoned the party for Kadima, but are now reconsidering. Kadima fears that "tactical voting" -- voting for Labor in order to ensure that it will be Kadima's senior coalition partner -- could cause three to six seats of floaters to move from it to Labor.
The Likud, too, is ready for a rearguard battle over about 100,000 of its voters who either do not plan to vote this time or who are still undecided.
The chairman of Likud's election-day headquarters Knesset member Moshe Kahalon instructed over the weekend branch managers and activists to literally fight for every voter by getting them to the polls.
To safeguard Tuesday's polls, Israeli police and security forces have been on high alert throughout the country since Sunday, 48 hours before the opening of the polling stations, after receiving more than 70 alerts of planned attacks to coincide on election day.
Police closed the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to visitors from Monday morning and will close the site throughout Tuesday to avoid possible militants attacks.
The Jerusalem District Police also instructed its officers to be on heightened alert in light of the possibility of an attack by extremists looking to cause riots within Jerusalem's Old City. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz instructed security forces to do everything possible to ensure that the elections will not be disrupted.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 22,000 uniformed and undercover officers would deploy at city entrances and shopping malls and other public places deemed possible targets.
(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2006)
