Intelligence lawyer

Tzipi Livni's impeccable reputation helped her

With a minimal margin of 431 votes , the head of the diplomatic department, 50-year-old Tzipi Livni, won the internal party elections in the Israeli ruling Kadima party on Wednesday. If she manages to form a ruling coalition, she will become Israel's thirteenth prime minister. Tzipi's defeated rival, 60-year-old Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, may still challenge the election results and demand a recount. However, according to the Israeli media, this will only delay the procedure for electing the head of the party and is unlikely to affect the result.

According to the official election results, Tzipi Livni won 43.1% of the votes, Shaul Mofaz - 42%. 59-year-old Interior Minister Meir Shitrit and 55-year-old Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, who claimed leadership, received 8.4 and 6.5% of the votes, respectively. Voter turnout in the 74,000-strong party was 53%. Due to violations of the voting procedure, the election results were canceled in one of the polling stations in the south of the country, in the Bedouin settlement of Rahat. As employees of Shaul Mofaz's election headquarters told Vremya Novostei, 430 voters voted at this precinct. “They all unanimously supported Mofaz,” Mofaz’s press service told VN. If this is true, then Tzipi Livni won by only one vote.

Tzipi Livni will not rule the country for long - the next parliamentary elections are due to take place in a year and a half, in the spring of 2010, the opposition is calling for them to be held even earlier. The winner built her election campaign on promises to continue the policies of Ehud Olmert. This means that in the near future Israel will continue negotiations with the head of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, on the creation of an independent Palestinian state and discussions with Syria on the status of the Golan Heights.

A former employee of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad and mother of two children, Tzipi Livni largely follows the career of the legendary Golda Meir. She also initially headed the Foreign Ministry and only later became prime minister. “Golda is the only man in the government,” they said about Mrs. Meir in 1969, and now they say the same about Tzipi Livni. The Jerusalem Post newspaper notes that the new prime minister during the campaign tried to emphasize that she is in no way inferior to men. Tzipi Livni served in the Israel Defense Forces, where she received the rank of lieutenant, and from 1980 to 1984, after serving in the army, she was a Mossad agent. According to the British newspaper The Sunday Times, in the early 1980s, the Mossad carried out a number of liquidations of “Arab terrorists” in European countries, and young Tzipi allegedly took part in them. According to the testimonies of colleagues, “she settled in well in European capitals, worked with male agents, most of whom were former special forces and were hunting terrorists.”

Livni's parents are from Poland and came to Palestine in the early 1920s. Her father, Eitan Livni, was a member of the Jewish Irgun movement, which fought the British presence in Palestine. Livni is a lawyer by training. She owes her rise in politics to the former Israeli prime minister, head of the Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu, who appointed her in 1999 as head of the management of state-owned companies in Israel. Until this moment, Livni's name was mentioned extremely rarely in the Israeli media. Critics accuse her of trying to avoid making independent decisions. “It was constantly promoted by stronger individuals,” notes the Yedioth Ahronot newspaper.

Journalists say that several years ago, during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Livni said that she was a supporter of the growth of Jewish emigration from Russia to Israel. In response, the Russian leader joked that it would not be difficult for such a pretty lady to attract new immigrants. Now Livni will have to improve the image of the entire country. According to the Kol Israel radio station, Livni's reputation is "pure as mica." It is to this circumstance that Livni partly owes her victory; voters are too tired of the endless corruption scandals and investigations surrounding Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

An important contribution to Livni’s victory was made by her campaign staff, who spent the entire voting day calling Kadima members, essentially forcing them to come to the polls and vote. A VN correspondent, who was on duty all day on Wednesday at Tzipi Livni’s election headquarters, noted that Livni herself appeared at her headquarters only once; she nervously answered all the journalists’ questions: “Go vote!” The low voter turnout was beneficial to Shaul Mofaz, as his supporters voted in an organized manner in the morning. If Livni's campaign had failed to bring supporters to the polls, the results might have been different.

Israel has a parliamentary form of government, and the head of the party that receives the most votes in national elections becomes the prime minister. In connection with ongoing corruption investigations, members of the ruling Kadima party decided to replace party leader Ehud Olmert. By law, he remains the current prime minister until a new ruling coalition is formed or until he himself decides to resign. Tzipi Livni now has 28 days to form a coalition. “Tomorrow I will begin meetings with representatives of parliamentary factions in order to quickly create a coalition capable of coping with all the challenges that threaten us,” said the future prime minister after the completion of the vote count.

Maria GRISHINA, Dmitry DUBOV, Jerusalem