JERUSALEM – Israel will draw its own borders and withdraw from isolated West Bank settlements if acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s party wins elections next month, a political ally said yesterday, the clearest indication yet of the Israeli leader’s plans for a new government.

Avi Dichter, who has become Mr. Olmert’s chief spokesman on internal security issues, said Israel will move settlers from isolated areas to the main West Bank settlement blocs.

He also said the military would remain in the emptied areas, unlike last summer’s pull out from the Gaza Strip, and the whole process could take four years.

“It will be only a civilian disengagement, not a military disengagement,” Mr. Dichter said, adding the unilateral moves would be necessary after the rise of the terrorist Islamic group Hamas to power in the Palestinian parliament.

Israel, backed by America and the European Union, has said it will have no ties with a Hamas-led government unless the group, which is sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, renounces violence, recognizes Israel, and accepts past peace agreements.

“In the absence of a Palestinian partner, Israel will have to determine its final borders by itself, and that will involve the consolidation of smaller settlements into settlement blocs,” Mr. Dichter said in an interview with Israel Radio.

The prospect of further unilateral moves after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and four West Bank settlements last year was quickly denounced by settlers, Hamas, and hard-line Israeli politicians.

Taking over Kadima from its founder, Prime Minister Sharon, Mr. Olmert has moved in a different direction.

While Mr. Sharon, who has been in a coma since a January 4 stroke, declared no further unilateral withdrawals would take place, Mr. Olmert has stressed that Israel must determine its own borders with the Palestinian Arabs if negotiations are impossible – and he refuses to deal with a Hamas government.

Mr. Dichter, who retired as Shin Bet security chief last May and is a key Kadima candidate in the March 28 elections, said he was speaking in coordination with Mr. Olmert.

In a speech yesterday by satellite to a Washington conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, Mr. Olmert said Israel would not wait for an agreement to determine its borders.

Israel “will take the initiative if we will find that the Palestinians are not ready, are not prepared, or not mature enough to be able to make the necessary adjustments within themselves in order to be ready for this challenge,” he said.

He did not specifically address Mr. Dichter’s detailed outline.

A senior official close to Mr. Olmert, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give details to the press, said such a disengagement was an option, but policy would be determined only after the election.

Mr. Dichter said that unlike Gaza, where Israel destroyed 21 settlements and pulled its army out, the military would remain in parts of the West Bank after settlers leave. Israel also left its army in control of the West Bank areas already evacuated.

Final borders would be set within about four years, he said.

Hamas denounced the plans.

“This is another indication of Israeli policy, which ignores the existence of the Palestinian people,” a spokesman for Hamas’s parliamentary faction, lawmaker Salah Bardawil, said.

“Once again, Israel is threatening to adopt unilateral measures that vindicate Hamas’s view that there is no partner in Israel who seeks real peace, and that Israel used negotiations in previous years as a pretext to ignore and stall the granting of Palestinian rights,” Mr. Bardawil said.

Israel’s hawkish Likud Party called the plan a prize for Hamas. Polls show Likud trailing far behind Kadima as election day nears. Mr. Sharon abandoned Likud because of its opposition to his Gaza pullout and founded the centrist Kadima.

Mr. Dichter said Israel would seek American backing for any further West Bank moves.

America favors a return to long stalled negotiations, but at the same time recognizes that the political map has shifted with Hamas’s ascent to power. America considers Hamas a terrorist organization, as does Israel and the European Union.

The Palestinian Arabs claim all of the West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem for a state. But America has said Israel would not be expected to withdraw completely to the borders it held before capturing the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, implicitly recognizing Israeli control over major settlement blocs where most of the 253,000 Jewish settlers live.

Benny Katzover, leader of a militant settlement near Nablus, Eilon Moreh, said further withdrawals would not be as peaceful as the Gaza pullout, where resistance was mostly passive.

“There is no reason why we shouldn’t be beaten and suffer … and stop this process with our bodies,” Mr. Katzover told Army Radio.

Mr. Olmert, meanwhile, told President Putin of Russia in a phone conversation that Moscow’s invitation to Hamas for weekend talks was a mistake, according to a statement. Mr. Putin said Russia’s policy is to negotiate with all sides and press demands. He said negotiations are always held when the other side has difficult and dangerous positions.

The statement said Mr. Olmert disagreed strongly. “Russian contacts with Hamas simply discourage Hamas from making the changes demanded by the international community,” he said.