The new go-it-alone approach to Mideast diplomacy received a big boost in both Israel and the Palestinian territories yesterday.

The Kadima Party, which is promising unilateral separation from the Palestinians in the absence of peace talks, won Israel's elections, according to TV projections. The Palestinian parliament approved a new Hamas Cabinet, which refuses to recognise Israel's right to exist.

The Israelis' and Palestinians' parallel "unilateralism" — eschewing negotiations while pursuing their own national agendas — bodes well for separation but poorly for peace.

The nature of Kadima's victory — with projections showing it winning anywhere from two to five seats fewer than expected — will likely push it to join forces with left-leaning parties such as Labour and possibly Meretz, which are expected to push for renewed negotiations with the Palestinians' moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas.

However, Ehud Olmert, the Kadima leader who looks set to become Israel's next prime minister, has said he would cut contacts with a Palestinian Authority that has Hamas in charge of its key institutions — unless Hamas defies expectations and renounces its violent ideology.

So far Hamas, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections on January 25, says it won't cave in to international pressure to moderate. But if it fails to change, it will face a devastating international economic boycott once its Cabinet is sworn in later this week.

Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rudeina said at an Arab summit in Sudan on Tuesday that the Palestinians were "ready to go into direct and immediate negotiations" with Israel following the Israeli vote.

But if Israel maintains its position that there is no credible negotiating partner on the Palestinian side, it can be expected to follow through on the plan to draw its final borders on its own. Olmert has been clear about what this will entail: unloading much of the West Bank, dismantling outlying Jewish settlements while strengthening key settlement blocs and withdrawing behind a security barrier that will serve as Israel's border.

The new map will fall far short of what Palestinians envision for their future state.

"The programme of Kadima is to isolate the Palestinians with a unilateral solution ... putting the Palestinians in a prison, in isolated cantons, keeping a wide range of lands in the West Bank," said Ghazi Hamad, publisher of Hamas' weekly newspaper "The Message".

Olmert has said the planned West Bank withdrawal will be accompanied by a strengthening of major Jewish settlement blocs and consolidation of Israeli control over the disputed city of Jerusalem.

It's hard to imagine that Israel would withdraw its military from the West Bank in the absence of a peace agreement and security guarantees from the Palestinians.

The danger of Palestinian militants acquiring increasingly sophisticated weaponry that could target major Israeli cities was brought home yesterday, when the Israeli army said Gaza militants for the first time had fired a long-range Russian-made Katyusha rocket into Israel.

"I'm not prepared to accept Katyusha rockets falling on Israeli cities or that we would accept a situation of a terrorist government and a reality of Katyushas," said Avigdor Lieberman, head of Israel Beitenu, a previously fringe right-wing party that appears to have become the third largest group in the Knesset. — Associated Press