Elections must be held, Israel decides

President Shimon Peres told parliament on Monday that he had consulted with all of Israel’s political parties and found there was no choice but to hold elections.

Peres’ announcement came a day after Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni abandoned an attempt to cobble together a new ruling coalition. He said no other lawmaker was capable of forming a government.

The action moved Israel closer to a bruising election campaign that will decide the future of peace talks, as polls showed the moderate Livni in a surprisingly close race with hard-line opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Neither of Israel’s two leading political parties would have enough seats to form a government on its own, according to the surveys, which also showed an even split between the country’s hawkish and center-left blocs. That situation signals more deadlock in peacemaking with Syria and the Palestinians.

Parliament has three weeks to dissolve itself. The vote, Israel’s third in six years, would take place three months later.

Olmert, who is being forced from office by a series of corruption investigations, said he would remain in office as a caretaker in the meantime.

A poll by the Dahaf Research Institute showed Livni’s Kadima party winning 29 seats, the same number it has now, and Netanyahu’s Likud taking 26 if elections were held today. A TNS Teleseker survey gave Kadima 31 seats and Likud 29.

The Dahaf poll of 500 people had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

The TNS survey of more than 900 people put the maximum margin of error at two parliamentary seats.