MAALEH MICHMASH (West Bank): For many Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s March 28 election is a do-or-die battle for their future.

In what has become the central issue of the campaign, they are fighting a plan by interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the expected winner of the poll, to remove isolated settlements as part of moves to impose Israel’s final borders by 2010.

Thousands are campaigning feverishly for pro-settler parties to keep land they view as a “biblical birthright.”

Some analysts say if the pullout goes ahead, violence could erupt that would make protests over last year’s dismantling of settlements in the Gaza Strip seem tame. That was the first Israeli withdrawal from land Palestinians want for a state.

“These are the most decisive elections for us that Israel has ever held,” said Emily Amrusy, spokeswoman for the settlers’ YESHA council. “I feel as though I’m on trial and waiting in the dock for the verdict.”

A few settlers have joined Olmert’s centrist Kadima party to try to minimise the number of settlements he might uproot from land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Otniel Schneller, a former settler leader from Maaleh Michmash, a small enclave near the Palestinian city of Ramallah, is running on Kadima’s slate for parliament.

His neighbours are so angry that many want him expelled from the red-roofed settlement.

Olmert has promised to set Israel’s final borders if a Palestinian government being formed by Hamas does not recognise the Jewish state and disarm.

His go-it-alone approach would leave Israel in control of major settlement blocs in the West Bank.

Palestinians view the settlements as a hated symbol of occupation. They have condemned the unilateral plan, saying it would not foster peace.—Reuters