Stephen Farrell, Middle East Correspondent of The Times, explains why the acting Israeli Prime Minister has has been so frank in the newspapers today about his plans to redraw Israel's borders

Why has Ehud Olmert gone to the newspapers to outline his plans for a unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank? Isn't he going further than Ariel Sharon?

He is certainly giving more details than Ariel Sharon ever gave. The reason for that is that he has to face an election on March 28, and Israeli officials indicate that his strategy is to keep the momentum behind his ruling Kadima party by a steady drip, drip, drip of initiatives, proposals, plans and ideas, designed to suggest to people that the party is moving ahead.

Kadima means 'forward' in Hebrew, and for most people that is the point of the party, to move the Israelis and Palestinians onwards into a new era.

Mr Olmert has a delicate balance to achieve. On the one hand he is ahead in the polls, so he doesn't want to go out on a limb and alienate any section of the community, but on the other hand Kadima's lead is slowly sliding in the polls, and he needs to give the impression of dynamism. So he is revealing more of his hand than that arch poker player Mr Sharon ever would.

How extreme are the West Bank withdrawals he is proposing?

Not very. They are what Mr Sharon himself proposed and what everyone has been expecting. The idea of disengaging from the Palestinians was widely trailed by Mr Sharon. Everyone expected after the Gaza disengagement that there would be some form of West Bank disengagement.

The broad brush strokes of the policy: separation from the Palestinians, trading Gaza for US acquiescence in Israel keeping the major West Bank settlement blocs - all of these were central to Mr Sharon's pitch to the Israeli people. All that Mr Olmert is doing is to flesh them out somewhat.

The idea of fixing Israel's borders was again mentioned by Mr Sharon. What Mr Olmert is doing is to give a timeline that he will do it within Kadima's first administration, by 2010, giving the Israeli electorate to whom that appeals more reason to vote for him.

Why is Kadima losing popularity in the polls?

There was a sympathy vote for Ariel Sharon after he suffered his stroke in January, and Kadima's dramatic birth created a kind of shock of the new, but as time wore on those factors were bound to wear off. The polls began to slide once Mr Olmert had to move on from the vague appeal of being Mr Sharon's heir, and start outlining specific policies, directions and aims which would then be open to criticism from his political rivals.

What sort of person is Mr Olmert? Could he pull off such an ambitious plan?

He doesn't have the charisma of Mr Sharon or his military credentials. He is not the founding father of the Israeli state that Mr Sharon and Shimon Peres represented to their generation.

He is however widely seen as a very capable, clever, far-sighted, pragmatic leader, certainly prepared to go further than Mr Sharon was. He is widely seen as the architect of Mr Sharon's disengagement policy.

But he is also seen as arrogant. He made one notable faux pas recently when he suggested that it was a foregone conclusion that Kadima was going to win, and it was only a question of by how much. Mr Sharon was well aware that it was very dangerous to take an electorate for granted, and it was a mistake he would never have made. The opposition parties nickname him "Smolmert", which is a play on the Israeli word for "leftist".

Can he get away with acting unilaterally, without negotiating with the Palestinians?

There is precedent for it. Israel imposing a unilateral solution in the West Bank is very much along similar lines to Israel withdrawing from Gaza with no negotiation with the Palestinians. After the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, the Israeli government appears to believe that now is an opportune moment for it - once again - to lay down the parameters of any future arrangement, because never again will it have a White House so well-disposed towards Israel and a Palestinian leadership that looks set to be a pariah in the world.

What is the Palestinians' reaction to Israel's unilateral measures?

Hamas's leader Khaled Mashal has described Olmert's plan single-handedly to redraw the border in the West Bank as a 'declaration of war'. Mahmoud Abbas and his outgoing Fatah administration have consistently deplored Israel's insistence on trying to impose its desired outcome on the ground, saying that the only possible long-term solutions are those agreed by negotiation between the two parties. Mr Abbas's supporters accuse Israel of strengthening the men of violence by refusing to negotiate with Mr Abbas, thereby weakening him - and the moderates - in the eyes of the Palestinian people.

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