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Israel's Kadima party leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, left, dances with transsexual performer Dana International during a campaign rally for women in Jerusalem, Friday, Feb. 6, 2009. Israeli polls Friday showed a narrowing race between front-runner Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, giving Livni a chance at an upset victory just days before Tuesday's national election.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)JERUSALEM-The final opinion polls before Israel's election showed a narrowing race Friday but still projected a victory by hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party.A series of polls in Israeli newspapers gave Likud a slight lead over the Tzipi Livni's centrist Kadima centrist Party in the Tuesday ballot.But the polls showed voters clearly prefer hard-line parties, predicting Likud and its conservative allies would hold a solid majority in the 120-seat parliament.Such results would likely spell trouble for the U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.Israelis vote for parties, not individual candidates, and no individual party has ever held a majority.Instead, the largest party normally heads a coalition with smaller allies.If Friday's projections are accurate, Netanyahu,a vocal critic of the current peace efforts,would become the next prime minister.One poll showed Likud winning 27 seats, compared with 25 seats for Kadima.But the poll predicted that Likud and the other nationalist parties could together garner as many as 66 seats, compared with only 54 for centrist and more dovish parties.The Dialog company poll, published Friday in the daily Haaretz, surveyed 1,000 people by telephone and had a 3-percentage-point margin of error.In a separate question, 30 percent of respondents favored Netanyahu as prime minister, compared with 23 percent who preferred Livni.Similar polls in Israel's two other daily newspapers indicated comparable results. All the polls asked voters which party they planned to vote for. Under Israeli election law, no more opinion polls can be published before Tuesday's vote.Netanyahu and Livni champion very different approaches in peacemaking.Livni has been the chief negotiator with the Palestinians in a year of peace talks and supports an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state.Netanyahu says no agreement is possible in the foreseeable future, and instead says he will try to jump-start the Palestinian economy while continuing Israel's military occupation indefinitely.AP correspondent Karen Zolka contributed to this report....
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer
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