Tel Aviv // It was supposed to be a landslide victory. But in the end, Tzipi Livni was catapulted to the helm of Israel's ruling party - and likely, the government - by a mere 431 votes. Polls had predicted a major win by margins as high as 20 percentage points for Ms Livni in Wednesday's Kadima primary to replace Ehud Olmert, party boss and Israel's prime minister, who is resigning over a corruption investigation. But the Israeli foreign minister just barely beat Shaul Mofaz, the hawkish transport minister, pulling ahead with one percentage point. The race prompted politicians from the right and left to question Ms Livni's legitimacy to become Israel's first female leader since Golda Meir in the early 1970s. As the new Kadima chief, the 50-year-old lawyer by training will now have to quickly patch together a multiparty coalition under her leadership. If she fails, general elections will be called and may result in the centrist Kadima losing power to the right-wing Likud party under Benjamin Netanyahu. "All the tests that Tzipi Livni had to withstand in her nine years in politics are dwarfed in comparison to what awaits her starting today," Yossi Verter, a political commentator, wrote in the daily Haaretz newspaper yesterday. Indeed, the fast-rising star in Israeli politics is unlikely to have an easy road ahead. But she has already proven herself a survivor in the country's rough-and-tumble political world. Ms Livni entered politics with the Likud party in the late 1990s, her motivation stemming from her ultranationalist upbringing. Her Polish-born father, Eitan, was a former chief operations officer of the Irgun, an underground military group that targeted Palestinian Arabs as well as the British, who ruled Palestine before the creation of Israel in 1948. The Irgun identified itself with the Revisionist movement, which advocated the Greater Israel vision of claiming all of present-day Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jordan for the Jews. In 1947, Livni was one of several Jewish detainees who escaped from a British-run prison in the city of Acre in a famous Irgun break-in, which he helped engineer. He met his wife and Ms Livni's mother, Sarah, also an Irgun fighter, when they took part in robbing a train carrying salaries for British officials. Their wedding is believed to be the first among Israeli Jews following the establishment of Israel. In the 1970s, Livni was elected with the Likud into parliament. Before she followed in her father's political footsteps, Ms Livni spent four years working as an agent for the Mossad, Israel's overseas intelligence service, including a stint in Paris. While the French-speaking Ms Livni remains tight-lipped about those years, media reports have speculated that her experience there ranged from possible involvement in missions to hunt down Palestinian guerrillas in Europe to simply maintaining a Paris safe house. Ms Livni eventually shifted away from her parents' ideology. In 2005, she supported Ariel Sharon - at the time the Likud leader and Israeli prime minister - in pushing through Israel's withdrawal of civilians and troops from the Gaza Strip despite strong opposition within the Likud. "She was the person that helped Sharon's government survive when there were internal Likud clashes - and he rewarded her with senior positions like giving her the justice ministry," said Avraham Diskin, an Israeli political analyst. Later that year she joined Mr Sharon, Mr Olmert and others in leaving the Likud to set up Kadima, which endorsed an Israeli pullout from some West Bank lands as a pragmatic way to preserve Israel's Jewish majority. In early 2006, Mr Sharon suffered two strokes and fell into a coma from which he has not emerged. Observers say Ms Livni then struck a deal to support Mr Olmert as the next leader of Kadima, which in March 2006 won the general elections. In return, she was appointed vice prime minister and foreign minister. But tensions with Mr Olmert escalated when she called for him to step down after the release of an official report strongly criticising his handling of Israel's war with Hizbollah fighters in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. While Mr Olmert's popularity plunged in the aftermath of the war, the veteran politician refused to resign, and Ms Livni suffered criticism for remaining in his cabinet and not quitting. Still, her popularity has been propelled by her corruption-free image - she has been dubbed "Mrs Clean" - especially in contrast to Mr Olmert, who has been plagued by a string of corruption investigations. "She's one of the only politicians in Israel today whom people trust," said Raviv Drucker, a political commentator on Israel's Channel 10 TV. She has also gained supporters abroad for her role in the past year as chief negotiator with the Palestinians, even as those talks have yielded few tangible results. Ms Livni's acquaintances say that despite her serious and cold demeanour in public, she is witty and entertaining in private. Indeed, the mother of two, married to an advertising executive, has said she likes to play the drums at home to unwind. But whether or not she is liked personally, Ms Livni's willingness to advance talks with the Palestinians represents new hope for peace. In a commentary in Haaretz, Gideon Levy wrote that Israelis were "tired" of leaders who made empty promises when it came to the conflict with the Arab world. "The only thing remaining is to beg the candidate for the premiership: in God's name, surprise us, Tzipi," he wrote. vbekker@thenational.ae
Livni gains leadership in tight victory
In her quest to become Israel's second female prime minister, 'Mrs Clean' won by a mere 431 votes.
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