Tsipi Livni for Prime Minister

With the recommendation of Israel’s police to indict Prime Minister Olmert on corruption charges, and the approaching primaries in Mr. Olmert’s Kadima party that are now barely a week away, it seems an increasingly safe bet that the next prime minister of Israel will be the country’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, Tsipi Livni. (Or Tsipora Livni, to call her by her given name, though she prefers to go by her Israeli nickname)Although Mr. Olmert has been clinging to his office like a rock climber to a last belay, he will not be able to ignore his own promise to resign when and if a formal indictment against him is filed, which will almost certainly be done after the Jewish holidays are over in early October.And if Ms. Livni wins the Kadima primary — as the polls show her doing handily — in her contest with the transportation minister, Shaul Mufaz, who is also an ex-defense minister and army chief-of-staff, she will become Kadima’s and Israel’s next leader, at least until national elections are held. Israel’s next elections are scheduled for 2010, although it is quite possible that they will be moved up to an earlier date.Although she has not come from any place like Sarah Palin, Tsipi Livni is not only the first woman since Golda Meir to be within striking distance of Israel’s highest office, she is still a relatively fresh face in Israeli politics, which she entered less than 10 years ago.At that time, she had the political acumen to follow Ariel Sharon out of the Likud when he bolted from it in 2005 to found a new party; she was a junior cabinet minister whom no political analyst would have predicted would soon be vying for national power. Young, articulate, and attractive, she is a refreshing change in a country where prime ministers have almost always been fashioned from either perennial politicians or newly commandeered ex-generals.But this is also the problem with Ms. Livni, because although 10 years are enough time to make one’s views known about most subjects of national importance, Israelis still do not know where she stands on many things.She has almost never spoken out on economic issues, social issues, or Arab-Jewish and secular-religious issues. And on other matters, even in areas in which she has been closely involved as foreign minister, such as Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and Israel’s policies toward Syria and Iran, it is far from clear what she thinks or would do as prime minister.There is of course a practical wisdom in political reticence; it rarely makes you lose one’s friends and it makes no enemies. Yet the higher she climbs in Israeli politics, the more enemies Ms. Livni (who already has one in Mr. Olmert) is going to make — whether she likes it or not. It’s time Israelis knew what, and not just who, she’s for and against.Kadima was founded as a putatively centrist party that would attract Israelis who could not identify with the dogmatic positions of either Labor on the Left or the Likud on the Right, and Ms. Livni and her supporters have partly run her successful primary campaign against Shaul Mufaz on the argument that his right-wing positions would turn the party into a second Likud.Although this is not a frivolous contention, its mirror image can be directed against Ms. Livni herself. Mr. Olmert has seemed determined, at least on the Palestinian and Syrian fronts, to turn Kadima into a second Labor Party. How do Israelis know that Ms. Livni, who has never challenged Mr. Olmert’s positions in public, will not do the same?The fact is that they don’t. Mr. Olmert, who has been moving steadily left in his policies at the same rate that he has been moving steadily down in the polls, has adopted the policies, not only of the Labor Party, but of the Labor Party’s left-wing, on both the Palestinian and Syrian tracks.Vis-à-vis the Palestinians, he is now offering a close to one-to-one land swap for any territories annexed by Israel, plus the re-division of Jerusalem and the re-admission to Israel of a still-to-be-negotiated number of Palestinian refugees. Regarding the Syrians, he is now ready for a total Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.Does Ms. Livni agree with all this? She has hinted that perhaps she does not. Does she disagree? She has not stated clearly that she does. Israelis have no clear idea of what she believes.They deserve to have one. Many of them voted for Kadima because it stood, in their opinion, for a kind of tough-minded pragmatism that could not be found in either the Likud or Labor — an ability to look unflinchingly at the facts without the illusions either of Israel’s Right, which persists in thinking that Israel can prosper without having to give up any territory at all, and Israel’s Left, which remains convinced that if Israel gives up everything, it can live happily ever after in a friendly Middle East. These are two opposite forms of wishful thinking, each of which refuses to let reality get in its way.Mr. Olmert has embraced one of them, and for that reason alone, there is nothing to mourn in his fall from power. One can only be thankful that it happened before he gave away too much or did too much damage. (Not that he did so little, either.) There are many Israelis who would be happy to see Ms. Livni lead their country if only they could feel sure that she would not take the same line. She needs to assure them of this.Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.

Tsipi Livni for Prime Minister

Tsipi Livni for Prime Minister

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