Tzipi Livni Rolls the Dice on Elections
The "Mrs. Clean" of Israeli politics says she'd rather face the voters than submit to political blackmail.
Tzipi Livni, the head of Israel’s ruling party Kadima, is saying “hello elections, goodbye blackmail” in her decision to quit trying to wrangle together a coalition deal with fellow political parties.
The woman who would be prime minister told the country Sunday night, “There are others who are willing to pay any price, but I am not willing to sell the state and its citizens only to become the prime minister.”
The reference was a not-so-veiled snub at her main rival for the job, Benjamin Netanyahu, who, observers speculate quietly, has made a deal with Shas, an ultra-Orthodox party, to acquiesce to their demands in return for their support.
It is Shas that Livni, a political centrist, blames for foiling the coalition talks with a steep price tag for joining a government. Their conditions included two zingers: taking the future of Jerusalem off the table in negotiations with the Palestinians, and demanding almost $400 million in social welfare funds aimed at their target constituency — poor, religious families with numerous children.
Netanyahu was forcefully thrown out of the prime minister’s office by Israeli voters in 1999, but as leader of the opposition he has regained some of his former popularity; according to the polls, he is Livni’s stiffest competition.
However, polls Monday greeted Livni, Israel’s second female foreign minister since Golda Meir — who hopes to follow in her footsteps to also become prime minister — with some good news. A poll by Dahar Research Institute showed Kadima, the centrist political party she leads and which is currently in power, as winning 29 seats as opposed to 26 seats for Netanyahu’s opposition Likud in the 120-member parliament, known as the Knesset. Another poll by TNS Teleseker showed Kadima winning 31 seats and Likud 29 if the election were held today.
Livni was given the task of forming a new government after she won as head of Kadima last month, after current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced his resignation under a cloud of corruption investigations. She has been presenting herself as a new breed of politician on the Israeli political scene: one with clean hands.
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Dina Kraft is a Tel Aviv-based journalist.
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8 Comments
1. Ken Besig:Ms. Livni failed to form a governing coalition because she is inexperienced at governing, immature and lacking in any principles, and finally a total incompetent at politics. This is no big surprise since she has been an abysmal failure as Foreign Minister for Israel (while at the same time being the best thing that every happened to Hizballah and Hamas), and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to her credit as a Knesset member.
Oct 27, 2008 - 4:19 am 2. ash:Ms. Livni has only managed to get ahead in Israeli politics because she comes from a politically well connected Israel family, and is as we call them in Israel, a princess, just like Ehud Olmert, Dan Meridor, Tsachi HaNegbi, and even Benyamin Netanyahu come from royal Israeli families and are known here as princes.
However, whereas Netanyahu and HaNegbi have actually gotten into to the Israeli political trenches so to speak, and proven their abilities, Ms. Livni and Mr. Olmert have always been content to let others do the tough and dirty political work while they rode in on their coattails.
Ms. Livni as well as Ehud Olmert rode into power on Ariel Sharon’s coattails, and simply slipped into place after Sharon had his stroke.
Almost anyone else, myself included, could have formed a stable Israeli governing coalition last week. The fact that Livni could not attests to her inexperience, he lack of practical political ability, and her total inabiity to inspire confidence in anyone. After all, the only thing that stood between two years of a Livni administration and new elections was a few million shekels, and a committment to Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. These are hardly impossible barriers, except for the now “clean” Tzipi, who by the way managed to sit untroubled in an Olmert government for over two years while the Prime Minister himself was under Police investigation for any number of crimes and paid off every political blackmail that came his way.
If u write that livni and her fraud leftist party are centrists anouther ten times u might actually beleive it.As a member of the livni hopeless pr team your not fooling anyone with the mrs clean act your better off joining reuters.
Oct 27, 2008 - 8:52 am 3. Frank:This article makes me puke, so much BS dont know where to begin.
Enjoy the livni spin but bibi will win easy.
Didn’t Livni refuse to promise to keep Jerusalem undivided?
Netanyahu all the way
Oct 27, 2008 - 11:11 am 4. An informed Israeli:Why bother to publish such an uninformative chunk of writing? It reads like a washed leftist trivia entry - Livni is called this, Shas is known as that …
What about some opinion? Or maybe you have none?
E.g., you could have elaborated more on pollsters’ grave errors predicting a landslide victory for Livni in a race with Mofaz, and enlightened your readers about alleged frauds in those elections (burned ballots, Druzi political machines, etc.).
Ms. Livni miserably failed at forming a government based on majority fraction in Knesset, where most MKs prayed for her to succeed - knowing full well that they will see the Melia after the next election on TV only. What makes anyone think she is capable to run the country?! What experience she has? Her genealogy?
Well, taking into account that Geveret Kraft fails even to mention that her Alma-mater on honesty and “balanced” “investigative” journalism is AP (http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/special/staff.html)- we need not to be surprised.
Who pays for this puff-piece, anyway? Adler et Khomsky from “Forum - Ha-Hava”?
Oct 27, 2008 - 1:51 pm 5. Anonymous:I stil cannot understand why did it take so long for Shas to get out and, first of all what tf kept Avigdor Liberman (”Liebermann”) in the coalition he hates. O.K., it’s “above my paygrade”. But I still want Gilad to get home ALIVE.
And: Israel and Georgia (that Georgia, the victim of the COMMUNIST IMPERIALISM) want McCain/ourSarah to win. Sweet.
Oct 27, 2008 - 5:56 pm 6. Ex-fetus:The only peace possible between Muslims and Jews is the peace of the grave. The Jews delude themselves about that, just as they deluded themselves about Hitler’s intentions. The Muslims understand that they have to exterminate the Jews, only they lack the means to do so.Once those means are acquired, there will be peace in the Holy Land.
A combination of Livni and Obama means the end of Israel.
Oct 27, 2008 - 9:43 pm 7. Ed Mahmoud:I hope Netanyahu wins, as an American. I don’t think Bush has the political capital now to risk an instant invocation of the War Powers Act if he moves to stop the Iranian Manhattan Project, and the likely next President is clearly not going to offend his many fans in the Islamic world.
If Israel can’t stop Iran, probably nobody will. The first target of an Iran with a nuclear deterrent will be Israel, but Iran’s foreign legion, Hezb’Allah, is established in the Americas, and a destroyed US city might not be far behind.
Oct 28, 2008 - 11:00 am 8. divas:here’s a link on Ms Livni
Oct 28, 2008 - 11:18 pmhttp://drdivas.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/israel-politics-livni-takes-a-principled-stand/