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Madame, start fighting
By Yoel Marcus
Tags: israel news

I will not deny that I after meeting Tzipi Livni for the first time, I came away thoroughly impressed. She sports an upright posture, is imbued with a mixture of self-confidence and timidity, and, most important, can express herself eloquently. In later meetings, after she had already been named foreign minister, the shyness melted away in favor of her self-confidence, yet her appearance as well as her speaking abilities remained
impressive.

I did not fall off my chair in shock when French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is a head-and-a-half shorter than Livni, suggested to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that she should replace Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Sarkozy has a weakness for attractive women
w
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ho are taller than he is. Television viewers can recall the look on the president's face as his eyes zeroed in on the nearly bare-chested Bar Refaeli at a reception at the Elysee Palace.

Sarkozy made his suggestion, to Bibi and a dozen other guests, without knowing her character and her stubbornness. It goes without saying that Sarkozy also has no grasp of our political system, let alone the arrogance of the politicians operating within that system. Livni is in
no rush to begin working for Bibi, nor can someone like Lieberman be replaced overnight.

Livni erred when she refused Netanyahu's offer to join his government after the election. Her pride would not allow her to tolerate a situation in which the largest party in the Knesset would be led by the second-largest. Perhaps it is not a normal circumstance, in which the
voters sent Labor  which contracted to 13 Knesset seats under the leadership of Ehud Barak  into the government, while sending Kadima, with 28 Knesset members, into the opposition.

We have no idea as to how Livni would have performed as prime minister, yet as the head of the opposition her conduct appears, in the words of one politicians, to be "pareve," neither meat nor milk. Bibi with 12 Knesset seats demonstrated a greater presence and made more noise than
Tzipi with her legions in the opposition. A disappointed Livni observer claimed that she makes decisions on her own, while to her right sits Naftali Shpitzer (her husband) and to her left Eyal Arad ("the strategist").

She is dragging her former ministers through hell. We have not even mentioned Shaul Mofaz, who declared open war on her this week by characterizing her as "a nice person to sit down and have a drink with, but she cannot withstand pressure." But without an alternative Mofaz is likely to remain stuck in Kadima.

Even though the public wants Kadima in the government, Livni has not proven that she is a worthy alternative to Bibi. It does not appear that the Kadima legions are fully behind her, and the possibility that seven MKs, with or without Mofaz, could quit the party is not to her credit.

Livni also lashes out at Bibi in the parlance of a Middle Eastern bazaar. "Be a man, leave it alone," or "We have a prime minister who is a chameleon." In his three months in office Bibi has not accumulated a critical mass of hostility that justifies this line of attack. It is
hard to guess how she would have conducted herself had she become prime minister. Yet as leader of the opposition the manner in which she addresses the prime minister is not helping her. Calling Bibi a demagogue and other derogatory terms is better suited to disputes between
stall-owners in the shuk than relations between two party heads. Livni needs to build herself up as a worthy alternative, and to do so with an iron fist inside a silk glove.

Sharon founded Kadima in order to neutralize the Likud, which sought to thwart his moves on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, including the evacuation of Gush Katif as the initial phase of a far-reaching plan "to put an end to the dream of the Greater Land of Israel." Livni often
boasts that she authored the Kadima platform. But where is she now, when Bibi's right-wing government does not want to recognize the two-state principle? What's keeping her from tellingus what she would be doing in Bibi's place? Has she fallen asleep on the job?

She has not commented on the Cairo speech of U.S. President Barack Obama, nor has she reacted publicly to Netanyahu's address at Bar-Ilan University. Is she in favor of continued construction in the settlements, whether of high-rise, low-rise or on the diagonal? With her passivity is she not contributing to the squandering of Sharon's legacy?

The public wanted Kadima in power. Following the resignation of Ehud Olmert as prime minister Livni could have formed a coalition without going to elections, had she been more flexible and less arrogant, and had she agreed to bring Shas into the government and leave Bibi with his 12
seats in the opposition. Then she would have challenged the 2010 election as the incumbent prime minister.

As opposition leader, Livni has yet to present herself as an alternative. She is too reliant on marketing gurus. While this may be good for local advertising queen G. Yafit, it certainly is not good for someone who views herself as prime ministerial material. If you see yourself
as an alternative, as someone deserving of the chance to lead the country here and now, this is the time to start fighting.
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  1.   "Parve" is an understatement 00:46  |  Fortuna Benmayor 01/01/09
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