THIRTEEN miles inside the Palestinian-majority West Bank, Israeli bulldozers are trying to lay out the Jewish state’s new borders in concrete and razor wire.

As Israeli voters head to the polls tomorrow, the ruling Kadima party created by Ariel Sharon has redrawn the political landscape and is now trying to secure its place in history by seeking unilaterally to redraw Israel’s boundaries.

The giant earthen scar running beneath the Jewish settlement of Ariel reflects the “separation” strategy of Mr Sharon — which is set to propel Kadima to electoral victory even though he lies comatose in a hospital in Jerusalem after suffering a massive stroke in January.

Under the plan — the centrepiece of Kadima’s appeal to the voters — Israel will withdraw from remote Jewish settlements outside the barrier to secure its hold on the huge settlement blocs around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that it really wants to keep.

Despite recent slippage in the polls, Mr Sharon’s efficient but uncharismatic heir, Ehud Olmert, looks set to win 34 to 37 of the Knesset’s 120 seats and the fledgeling party has already achieved hegemony over the centre ground of Israeli politics.

Mr Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem who is seen as the architect of the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year, has tapped into widespread impatience with Palestinians after five years of violence and a desire among Israelis to impose rather than negotiate.

“The people of Israel don’t have time to wait 20 years for Hamas to mature,” he said, exploiting Israelis’ fear of the newly victorious Palestinian Islamist group. “The state of Israel cannot allow a fundamentalist Palestinian Authority to dictate its political calendar.”

Instead, the Prime Minister in waiting says that he will conduct internal soundings and then consult abroad about “borderlines such that all of the international community would support, including the United States of America”.

Israel’s Right is furious at the prospect of giving up more land.

The Palestinians are furious that the barrier slices off about 10 per cent of the West Bank and say that the internationally recognised Green Line — which delineates Israel proper from the West Bank, which it has held under military occupation since the 1967 war — cannot be redrawn by one side. But the strategy appears pragmatic to many Israelis and has drawn supporters from Left and Right. Ari Grishpon, a student from Ariel, admitted that he had drifted right of the left-wing Meretz Party that he used to support and was now broadly in sympathy with Kadima.

Sharon Abiksis, a retired colonel, has travelled in the opposite political direction. “I was in the army many years. I lost friends. I have friends in wheelchairs. If it were up to me I would slice, dice and wrap the Palestinians into packets. I say kill them all,” he said.

“But my views are not practical. This is 2006. We are all people. I want a better future for my children. I want a better economy . . . Sharon gave Kadima a good foundation. He is a leader, a bull.”

Israeli analysts believe that Kadima will be the kingmaking party even if it loses ground as apathetic Israelis finally become focused and the Sharon sympathy factor recedes.

“The race is not just about seats but about being in the middle of the system,” Gideon Rahat, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said. “Kadima holds the pivotal position. Because it sits in the middle of the political spectrum, even if it loses ten seats it is strong.”

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