Israel's Livni emphasizes peace credentials
By STEVE WEIZMAN – 37 minutes ago
JERUSALEM (AP) — Soft-spoken and lacking the battlefield credentials of her
rivals, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni presents herself as the best hope for
bringing peace to Israel and promises to take a tough line toward Palestinian
militants.
Throughout the campaign for Tuesday's election, Livni stressed her experience
as Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians. At the same time, she was
one of the architects of Israel's recent offensive against Gaza militants,
which killed nearly 1,300 Palestinians.
She displayed both attributes in a single speech recently, emphasizing that
peace and security go hand in hand.
"This election is about peace," she told a prestigious security conference.
"The dove is on the window sill. We can choose either to slam the door or let
it in."
At the same time, she added, "terror must be fought with force, and lots of
force."
Livni, 50, was elected to head the ruling Kadima party in a closely fought
primary last September, replacing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is stepping
down to fight corruption charges. If she can line up enough parliamentary
factions to cobble together a coalition government, she will become Israel's
second female leader after Golda Meir, who served from 1969 to 1974.
It's far from clear she'll be able to do that, given the hawkish bent of the
incoming parliament. After being elected Kadima's leader, Livni failed to keep
the current faction intact — forcing Israel into the early elections held
Tuesday.
Livni, like Olmert, followed then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon out of Likud to
set up Kadima in the aftermath of Sharon's 2005 Gaza withdrawal from the Gaza
Strip, which Likud strongly opposed. Sharon later suffered a massive stroke and
is still in a coma.
She was first elected to parliament in 1999 and rose rapidly. She has held six
Cabinet offices, including foreign affairs and justice.
She has a reputation as a pragmatic straight talker who disdains back-room
horse trading and loathes graft. She has pledged, if elected, to practice "a
different kind of politics".
She completed Israel's compulsory military service as a lieutenant and then had
a spell in the Mossad spy agency. She traded that in to become a corporate
lawyer, wife and mother of two sons.
In 2007, Time magazine included her in its list of the world's 100 most
influential people, and she was No. 52 in a Forbes magazine ranking of the
planet's 100 most powerful women.
Belittled by her domestic rivals as having insufficient hands-on military
experience, she has been pressing for tougher and immediate Israeli responses
to the Palestinian rockets that have continued to hit southern Israel since
Israel ended its Gaza offensive on Jan. 18.
"Israel will act and strike and continue to act if need be, and if at the end
of this operation they don't understand, then we will continue until they
understand the message," she told the security conference.
Her father, Eitan Livni, was a hero of a right-wing Zionist underground
movement that battled the British in pre-state Palestine and believed Israel
should expand its borders into Arab lands.
She initially shared that dream but eventually concluded that it clashed
irreconcilably with the reality of living among a fast-growing Palestinian
population. Now she advocates creation of a Palestinian state in large parts of
the West Bank and Gaza.
