RAMALLAH

 Veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israelis had "buried" any prospects for peace by giving the right-wing Likud party a plurality of seats in just-ended Knesset polls.

"Israelis' decision to elect [Prime Minister and Likud party leader] Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said he won't allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, buries the peace process and further entrenches [Israel's policy of continued] settlement-building," Erekat, a leading member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told a Palestinian radio station on Wednesday.

Exit-poll results following Tuesday's Knesset polls indicated that Netanyahu's Likud party had won 30 seats, while its center-left rival, the Zionist Union alliance, came in second with 24 seats.

"These election results mean there will be no peace partners," Erekat said.

"With the [Israeli] right wing staying in power, we will resort to international organizations [to seek redress for Israel crimes], including the International Criminal Court," he added.

Erekat went on to urge the international community to stop supporting and protecting the self-proclaimed Jewish state.

Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday to elect 120 members of the Knesset (parliament).

The country's official electoral commission said that the voter turnout in Tuesday's vote stood at 71.8 percent.

According to the commission, final poll results will be announced on Thursday.

Peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators ground to a halt one year ago over Israel's refusal to release a group of Palestinian prisoners despite earlier pledges to do so.

The roots of the Palestine-Israel conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-famous "Balfour Declaration," called for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

In 1948, with the expiry of a UN "mandate" awarded to Great Britain, a new state – Israel – was declared inside historical Palestine.

As a result, some 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes, or were forcibly expelled, while hundreds of Palestinian villages and cities were razed to the ground by invading Jewish forces.

Israel went on to occupy East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state – a move never recognized by the international community.

Palestinians want their own independent state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.