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September 24, 2008
Livni Wins Kadima Contest
Jerusalem
Leslie Susser
JTA Wire Service
With her victory in the Kadima Party primary and Ehud Olmert’s resignation official, Tzipi Livni’s next major task will be assembling a coalition government so she can become prime minister.
Then all she’ll have on her plate is figuring out how to arrest the threat to Israel from Iran, resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a historic peace deal, neutralize the threat on Israel’s northern border from Hezbollah and run the country.
If she ever gets to it. The immediate challenge facing Livni is translating her 431-vote margin of victory in the Sept. 17 primary into a stable coalition government.
Livni finished with 43.1 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz. Early exit polling had given Livni a double-digit victory, but the foreign minister’s margin dwindled as the votes were counted late into the night.
Political rivals and potential coalition partners are pointing to Livni’s relatively small mandate – only about 33,000 people voted in the Kadima election—to argue that Livni alone should not lead the country.
Livni has made it clear that she wants to base her new government on the existing coalition—the Kadima, Labor, Shas and Pensioners parties—with the possible addition of other parties such as Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu on the right, Meretz on the left and the fervently Orthodox Torah Judaism Party.
But Labor argues that a prime minister effectively elected by only 17,000 or so Israelis has no legitimacy and that the Israeli people as a whole should be allowed to have their say in new elections.
Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu agrees. Polls show Likud would win many more than its current share of 12 Knesset seats if new general elections were held, possibly even winning the plurality and catapulting Netanyahu back into the office of prime minister.
Shas is also threatening new elections unless Livni meets its demands for more generous child allowances and a pledge to keep Jerusalem off the negotiating agenda with the Palestinians.
Livni will have 42 days to form a government. If she fails, Israel will be headed for new general elections, possibly as early as next spring. If she succeeds, she could govern for a year or two before going into a new election with the incumbency advantage.
During the campaign, Livni gave a slew of interviews in which she spelled out her priorities:
-Moving ahead on the Palestinian track: Over the past few months, she and the former Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, have been drafting a full-fledged Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Both sides say that although they have made progress, closing the wide gaps that still exist will take time.
-Once Livni is installed as prime minister, one key issue will become more difficult to resolve: refugees. Livni repeatedly has said that she will not agree to any resettlement in Israel proper of Palestinian refugees because allowing in just one Palestinian refugee would chip away at Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state.
-Livni might ease conditions on the ground for Palestinians by dismantling illegal settler outposts in the West Bank, something that successive Israeli prime ministers have failed to do. She argues that any government she heads will assert the rule of law.
As for Gaza, Livni warns that she will consider a large-scale ground offensive if Hamas uses the current truce to smuggle in huge quantities of arms.
-Ascertaining the seriousness of the Syrian track: Ever since Israel and Syria started conducting new peace feelers under Turkish auspices in January 2007, Livni has not been in the loop. She has argued that by going public with the talks, Israel has provided Syria a degree of international legitimacy without getting very much in return.
-Livni will want to see for herself whether Syrian President Bashar Assad is ready for a peace with Israel that entails a significant downgrading of his relations with Iran.
-Dealing quietly with the Iranian nuclear threat: Livni says as far as Israel is concerned, “all options are on the table” and that to say more would be irresponsible. But she has intimated in the past that Israel could live with a nuclear Iran by establishing a very clear deterrent balance.
-Introducing a new style of cleaner government: Livni, who won the leadership race at least partly because of her squeaky clean image, will want to signal early on that she intends to introduce a new style of governing. Livni will want to clean up party politics by breaking the power of the Kadima vote contractors, who drafted people en masse to vote for a particular candidate. One idea is to set a minimum membership period—perhaps 18 months—before party members get voting rights.
By electing Livni, Kadima voters seemed to be saying enough of the generals at the top and enough of wheeler-dealer politics. Livni, dubbed Mrs. Clean, is seen as a straight-thinking, scandal-free civilian clearly out to promote Israel’s best interests.
She has a full agenda, a chance to change the tenor of Israel politics and to make historic moves vis-a-vis the Palestinians and Syria.
But first she will have to put together a viable coalition.
(JTA managing editor Uriel Heilman contributed to this report.)
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.