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The woman who stands to gain from Gaza’s misery
Mira Bar-Hillel in Tel Aviv05.01.09
AS tank and artillery shells rain down on Gaza, here in Tel Aviv, (beyond the range of Hamas rockets, so far), we are being bombarded by election posters. The war was preceded by an explosion of advertising hoardings, set up along the roadsides, banners across motorway bridges and countless flyers. The predominant image is that of Tsipi Livni, the foreign minister who may well be Israel's leader after the 10 February election. Indeed, this denim-wearing, vegetarian mother-of-two is poised to reap a rich political reward from the Gaza adventure.
She stares down from innumerable posters, her slightly pudgy face airbrushed to a youthful sleekness. She, of course, has been trying to airbrush Israel's image as it takes a pounding over the carnage. In London alone, 10,000 people joined a protest to call for a halt to the war which is said to have claimed more than 500 lives.
As a mood of anger and revulsion takes hold, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign minister Bernard Kourchner arrive here today determined to persuade Israel to pull back. Their efforts may well be directed towards Livni, because Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is a lame duck whose embroilment in corruption allegations led to the calling of next month's election.
What can Sarkozy - and the world - expect of this 51-year-old ex-Mossad agent? Not compromise, is the short answer. As leader of Kadima she could have become prime minister if she had been prepared to make a coalition agreement with Shas, one of the Orthodox Jewish parties. But Shas wanted a government spending deal that Livni refused to countenance. Her message was: I won't submit to blackmail.
If the French president, who has already been exerting tremendous pressure, thinks he has a chance of changing her mind, he is likely to be disappointed. Livni was in Paris last week as part of a diplomatic offensive to convince international opinion that Israel is simply trying to protect itself against terrorist aggression. She arrived back in Tel Aviv in the early hours of Friday morning and immediately joined a meeting with Olmert and defence minister Ehud Barak. There was only one item on the agenda: do we recommend that the full cabinet authorise the sending of ground troops into Gaza? Yes, Livni, said. We most definitely do.
Many outside Israel will view Livni's apparent appetite for this conflict with dismay and a number of commentators have openly wondered whether her gung-ho attitude is linked to her undoubted ambition. She has only been in politics for 10 years and although she leads the Kadima party, questions persist over her abilities.
The opposition Likud party has been sponsoring a poster campaign with the slogan "The job is too big for her". This touched a nerve. Apart from her relative inexperience, Livni has no background in the area that concerns Israelis most: security. Barak's Labour party may struggle in the polls but his personal rating has shot up by 19 per cent since the Gaza attacks began. He is a former prime minister who left office after his political standing disintegrated but he was a successful high-ranking army officer and Chief of Staff and at times like these, they are the sort of men to whom Israelis have always turned.
What, Livni's critics ask, does she know of war? The answer now is: a lot more than she did. Whether this will translate into votes is impossible to gauge as the conflict continues. Livni is a lawyer who, in her 20s, worked as a spy for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. She was based in Paris and her work is said to have been low-level and certainly not anything likely to give Daniel Craig pause for thought. But she has not been reluctant to confirm her past as an agent for her country, no doubt because it helps redress the imbalance of security experience between her and Barak.
The only woman to lead Israel was Golda Meir, prime minister in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She was described by a previous PM as having more balls than the men in his cabinet but she never held the crucial position of defence minister. Many Israelis will remember this, and the fact that Meir's mishandling of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 took Israel to the very brink of defeat.
In committing herself so uncompromisingly to the Gaza operation, Livni may have answered critics who felt she would be weak on security but her fate is now inextricably bound up with the outcome of the onslaught on Hamas and the Palestinians.
If the operation is seen as having been successful and if Hamas rockets stop falling on Israeli civilians, then every political entity in Israel will fight over the spoils. There is a view that if Barak and Livni join forces they will be swept to victory, brushing aside the pre-war favourite Netanyahu.
Military and security considerations aside, Livni is already a strong contender for the prime minister's job. She comes from that generation of politicians known as Princes, whose families played a role in creating Israel's independence. Livni's father Eitan, a Pole, was one of the key figures in the Irgun, the underground movement that fought British rule in Palestine. Her mother was also an active Irgun member and was arrested by the British as a terrorist. She escaped after injecting milk into her veins, feigning illness and slipping away from the hospital to which she was sent.
The Irgun was responsible for one of the 20th century's most bloody acts of terrorism. It planted bombs in the King David hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing more than 90 people. The irony of Livni's war on Hamas is that her parents are celebrated in Israel for doing pretty much what Hamas are doing now.
Her heritage will be an advantage at the polls. So, too, is her image as an ordinary wife and mother. She has a good marriage, to advertising executive Naftali Spitzer, and is said to consult him on all major issues. Her friends from schooldays describe her as sporty - she excelled at basketball - and "a bit of a tomboy". She graduated from law school at Bar-Ilan University and after her Mossad episode practised as a lawyer.
Her sons, Omri and Yuval, were in their teens when she decided to enter politics around 10 years ago. At first she was seen as something of a hardliner, a champion of Greater Israel politics. Her mentor was Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister, and when he moved to the centre with his Kadima party she followed him, becoming more moderate and supporting his policy of withdrawal from Gaza.
Despite being burdened with some of Olmert's political baggage, she has a strong following but being a woman will not help. When Likud questioned whether the prime minister's job was "too big for her" they might just as well have said "too big for a woman". Israel cherishes its image as a country where sex equality really does exist but the truth has never lived up to the mythology.
When I was conscripted into the Israeli Army in the 1960s, the men had months of tough and uncompromising training, while the women had a few weeks of what I fondly remember as glorified summer camp. Nowadays women soldiers are often seen carrying automatic weapons and operate checkpoints. But if they become officers, it is usually in the lower ranks and few are bothered by the reservist call-up. Some have also detected a reluctance, here in Israel, to take Livni seriously while the fighting continues in Gaza. In Sunday's leading broadsheet, Haaretz, she got fewer column inches than the singer Annie Lennox, who was protesting against the war in London. She also trailed her close friend and ally Condoleezza Rice, her US counterpart, who said something unmemorable on the White House lawn. Eva Navon, a feisty 94-year-old resident of a kibbutz in southern Israel who is refusing the let the Hamas rockets force her from her home, received more attention in the media.
Yet after the disastrous tenure of Olmert, whose weakness for good cigars and designer watches seemed to fit only too perfectly the image of a man accused of base corruption, Livni appeared to some like a breath of fresh air. Her rivals Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu share a history of having been ejected by a disappointed electorate while she revels in the image of Mrs Clean.
Barak is especially reviled for his ostentatious penthouse in the prominent Akirov Tower, overlooking the centre of Tel Aviv. Netanyahu left office so unpopular that his genuine economic achievements received less coverage than his ex-airline stewardess wife Sarah's tendency to throw shoes at the hired help. But Netanyahu looked as if he could return to office, before the war changed completely the political agenda. He was leading in the polls and his Likud party seemed well-positioned to oust Kadima.
Netanyahu, a brilliant communicator, stands to the right of his rivals and once vowed never to do a "land for peace" deal. But as prime minister he did just that after coming under pressure from Washington. That may be recalled by voters now as he is weighed against Barak, the ex-Chief of Staff, and even Livni, the gung-ho mother.
So far, Livni has made no big mistakes. But here in Tel Aviv, where most of Israel's voters and decisions makers are, it all hangs on her great gamble to back the war. Can she and her cabinet colleagues really delivery a meaningful victory, one in which Israelis no longer have to fear Hamas terrorism, in whatever shape it arrives?
There is a sense here that it can all go horribly wrong, as it did in Lebanon in 2006. If Israelis see television pictures of young soldiers paraded by their Hamas captors while their comrades arrive home in zipped-up bags, any idea of a war properly conceived and prosecuted will be destroyed. And Israel does not exist in a vacuum. International pressure is building by the day. Any ceasefire deal with Hamas that does not guarantee the total cessation of rocket attacks on Israel will be seen as abject defeat.
If Livni is to achieve the destiny she believes awaits her, she cannot allow that to happen. If it does, the declamations of a previously little-known woman politician will be drowned out by the wail of Red Alert air raid sirens.
Reader views (14)
It would seem that Israil is comapring firecrackers to their bombs.
To clear up a point it was Israil that did not keep to their side of the cease fire by inposing a seige on Gaza.
The opressed will always fight back. If Israil thinks that destroying Hamas will stop the attacks they are sorely mistaken as the opressed are joining an idiology it just so happens that Hamas fitted the idiology at the time.
South Africa also had terrorists it was called the African National Congress (ANC) but the people faught on provide the future generation a better life until the ANC took over the Country.
Finaly no amount of spin can justify bombing hospitals, schools, UN barrack and press buildings.
- Ahmed, Durban South Africa
Some history facts:
In the 19th century in Israel and the area the population was very small outside of cities and in the cities at least 60% were Jews.
So even taking out of the equation the Jewish claim to the land from 2000 years ago the more modern situation is that we have a better claim than the Arabs. most "Palestinians" are immigrants which came AFTER the Jews managed economic success in a land that was a desert in the 19th century.
The problems between the west and the Arabs started before Israel - when the colonial powers (France and UK) were rebelled against by the Arabs in Lebanon and when anti colonial feelings erupted because of the Suez canal.
- Mozes, Jerusalem Israel
Ohad Itai,kibutz Dan, Israel
Unlike the slaughtered palestinian children hiding in UN marked shelters, you lived to tell your one sided sad tale. Running for cover to an Israeli army built underground bunker can hardly be compared to the indiscriminate killing of women and children in a school under the protection of the UN.One thing we can say about the Israeli government, their propaganda and spin doctors would put the nazi's to shame.
- James Hennessy, london england
This idea has nothing to do with facts:
HAMAS decided to utilize the gap of end of Israeli government, end of Palestinian president Abu Abas, and end of Us government. Therefore, they decided not to extend the ceasefire (you should know that in Arabic there are many types of ceasefire..most of them result in fire: the one chosen called HUDNA, and sound like "give me some time to reinforce, and I'll get back to kill you"..): facts are, that during 2008 more than 3500 rockets were launched from Gaza to Israeli cities! Since the goal of HAMAS is to destruct the state of Israel and kill all Jews, there is no much margin to the Israelis to respond, even during the election period.
I'm sure, that if the UK was attacked by rockets, they would also restrain for one day..two..ten...well, at least EIGHT YEARS, as the Israelis did... Yeh...reminding Fokeland...
- Abe Ariew, Haifa, Israel
Where have you been at this new year's evening?
Well, I'Ve spent it running for cover with my friends from the Ben-gurion university.
For 8 years we tolerated this, but no more!
What would the Great Britain do if a terrorist entity would have been continuously bombing your cities?
I dare say the response would have been much more severe!
- Ohad Itai, kibutz Dan, Israel
jenny, London
We can't wait for your indept analysis of the present conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.Judging by your ignorant baseless three line comment, you would have been hard pressed to add a fourth.
- James Hennessy, london england
I can't believe anyone can defend Israel's barbarity. It treats Palestinians like animals- cages their leaders, steals their land, walls them in with an Aparthied wall, assasinates whoever it wishes- then it accuses Palestinians of launching "terrorist" rockets. What nonsense! If Syria were to start building settlements in Tel Aviv, the Israelis would bomb them and damn the civilians killed! The US- the most fanatical supporter of Israel- condemns Hamas, but would nuke Russia if it started building settlements in NY!
I once had sympathy for the Israelis but no more. They deserve whatever consequences they get.
- Akhtar, Ottawa, Canada
Please stop detox on this war! The terrorists won again as you don't tell the truth. Hamas is sacrifiing poor palestinians and the neigbouring countries are not helping at all. Why don't Arab countries send humanitarian aid? Why is it only EU?
Such a shame. Please tell the truth.
Ana
- Ana Coelho, Brussels-Belgium
Well what the hell are you doing in London, Jenny ?
We are a civilised nation - you should be put on the next plane back to to Israel, along with all the Israelis in this country. The EEC should be encouraged to do the same.
Close the Embassies and Consulates.
The actions carried out by the Israelis are worse than those of Hitler.
- Geoff, Bratislava, Slovakia
This is the woman(? she looks more like a rottweiler) who says there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza... Israel will lurch further to the right with her in power.
- Jon Kent, Hertford. UK
It doesn't matter who becomes leader, they will have to deal with Hamas and Iran one way or another. When you have two 'governments' of that ilk denying the existence and indeed wanting to destroy Israel, then sitting around a table talking is simply not an option. So what else do you do?
- Frank, Home Counties, England.
Personally i have no problem with what Israel are doing, i can't stand all these stupid protesters who seem to have no idea of what they're talking about.
Time they all left the UK and lived in the real world.
- Jenny, London
James Hennessy: When your country has been continuously under attack by a terrorist organisation that seeks the destruction of your country, you do not choose liberal, socialist bleeding-heart politicians. Stands to reason.
- 5050 Noline, Eastbourne UK
To most people outside of Israel all these candidates seem to be much of a muchness.Warmongers to a man and a woman. What kind of country is it that judges its politicians on how many men women and children they are prepared to slaughter. So far it seems Livni is winning this unholy contest.
- James Hennessy, london england
