Last update - 00:00 09/08/2007
Half of Livni office staff will leave posts in coming days
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
Half of the members of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's staff will complete their assignments in coming days.
The departing staffers are Livni's bureau chief, Ilan Yonas; her personal assistant, Tamar Abramovich, and her media advisor, Ido Aharoni.
The three announced in the past few months that they intend to leave their positions, saying they felt they had completed their tasks.
Up until now, Livni has not appointed replacements for any of the three. In the last weeks, she enlisted two organizational advisors to examine the structure of her office, which has already been restructured once.
The advisors that remain in Livni's office include Uri Keidar, Alon Bar and her political advisor, Tal Becker, who is considered Livni's most loyal advisor, with whom she takes advice regarding the most sensitive of topics.
Senior political and security sources call Becker "the father of most of Livni's political initiatives," and the source of most of her political ideas in the last year.
In an attempt to rehabilitate her bureau, Livni enlisted Limor Toledano, who served as her bureau chief in the Justice Ministry. Toledano also accompanied Livni for many years as her secretary in the Ministry of Regional Development.
Toledano left after Livni took up the Foreign Ministry post. It is unclear what her future role in the ministry will be.