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Give Livni A Chance To Save Israel

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 22, 2008

Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, emerged last week as the leader of the governing Kadima Party and the favorite to succeed Ehud Olmert as prime minister. She is steely enough, no doubt, for the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call.

A former Mossad officer, she grew up as the daughter of parents who both fought with the right-wing Irgun underground. She entered politics as a member of the hard-line Likud party, and followed security hawk Ariel Sharon when he quit Likud to form Kadima.

What has yet to be proven is her ability to tame the growling lions who lead Israel's political parties. In Wednesday's primary, she finished a bare 1 percent in front of her principal opponent, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.

She now has six weeks to form a stable coalition government from among Israel's radically disparate parties, with each one seeking to blackmail her into granting it parochial concessions.
Livni has a reputation for being unburdened by the corrupt practices that brought down Olmert. Her clean political persona accounts for her popularity with the public - a trump card she can use in bargaining with leaders of both the religious Shas Party and the dovish Labor Party.
Livni is a new kind of Israeli leader, one who began as a hawkish believer in the illusion of a Greater Israel, but came to recognize that Israel can remain both democratic and a Jewish-majority state only if it ends the occupation and negotiates a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

She deserves a chance to save Israel from the course it has been following.

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