Olmert was able to inform senior members of his Kadima party of their new portfolios in the coalition cabinet after persuading the ultra-Orthodox Shas to sign up to the government.
The deal with Shas, which won approval in the small hours from the party's spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, will give the group four seats in the new cabinet as well as see around $400 million channeled toward ultra-Orthodox special interests such as religious schools.
The cabinet, however, will be dominated by members of Kadima, the party established in November by the now coma-stricken former premier Ariel Sharon.
The appointments contained few surprises, with foreign minister Tzippi Livni to remain in her post while former premier Shimon Peres will take charge of a new department dealing with development of the Negev and Galilee regions.
Outgoing defense minister Shaul Mofaz will become transport minister and one of a number of deputy prime ministers, while Abraham Hirshson, the current tourism minister, is to take over finance.
Although Monday's announcements only covered members of Kadima, it is already known that the defense portfolio will be in the hands of Amir Peretz, leader of the center-left Labor party, which came runners-up in the March 28 general election.
Peretz, one of the first civilians to hold the defense portfolio, is one of seven Labor ministers in the new government that will be presented to parliament for MPs' approval on Thursday.
The vote should be no more than a formality as the deal with Shas means that Olmert can theoretically rely on the support of 67 of the 120 deputies.
Any party who joins the coalition has to approve the principle of Olmert's so-called convergence plan under which he hopes to fix the Jewish state's final borders, with or without Palestinian agreement.
The plan will see around 70,000 settlers uprooted from the occupied West Bank. In return, Olmert will cement control of the big housing blocs where the vast majority of the quarter-of-a-million settlers live.
Sensitive to attacks from the nationalist right that he was selling the settlers out, Shas' leader in parliament Eli Yishai insisted that he would not automatically back the convergence plan when it is put to a vote in cabinet.
Nevertheless the coalition deal with Olmert includes a specific commitment by Yishai to support the incoming premier's foreign policy as enunciated in his election night victory speech when he fleshed out the convergence plan.
"The convergence plan is, of course, not acceptable to the Shas party and there is nothing new in that and our opinion has not changed," Yishai, who is to become trade minister as well as deputy premier, told army radio.
"Any issue which arises in the course of the two years for which I assume the government will survive will be submitted to the rabbi [Ovadia] for his decision."
Israeli coalitions are notoriously unstable but Olmert has been striving to cobble together such a broad-based cabinet that it can withstand whatever political storms emerge before the scheduled end of his term in 2010.
The prime minister designate, whose Kadima party won 29 seats, is still negotiating with a smaller ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism, as well as the leftwing Meretz and rightwing Yisrael Beitenu.
But even if he fails to bring them on board, Olmert can present his lineup for the approval of MPs on Thursday, bang on the four-week deadline set when President Moshe Katsav tasked him with establishing a government.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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