Woman Takes Step Toward Becoming Leader of Israel

By DION NISSENBAUM

By Dion Nissenbaum

McClatchy News Service

JERUSALEM

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni took a major step Wednesday toward becoming the nation’s second female prime minister after television exit polls found her winning the election to lead the government’s ruling party.

Exit polls for the major Israeli television stations predicted a clear victory for Livni, a diplomacy-first advocate, over Shaul Mofaz, a more politically uncompromising former defense minister.

By winning the Kadima Party primary, Livni is poised to succeed Ehud Olmert as prime minister .

Golda Meir is the only woman to have held the office in Israel’s 60-year history. She served from 1969 to 1974.

To repeat that milestone, Livni will have to use her diplomatic acumen to persuade skeptical political adversaries to join her in forming a new coalition government that can lead the nation.

If she fails to form a coalition by early November, she would be forced to lead the Kadima Party in national elections. Polls find her facing a difficult task in topping Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader and former prime minister, who has taken a harder line on peace talks with Israel’s adversaries.

By choosing Livni over Mofaz, Kadima voters implicitly endorsed the foreign minister’s diplomacy-before-warfare approach to tackling Israel’s biggest concerns: making peace with the Palestinians and neutering Iran’s nuclear program.

Should Livni succeed in becoming the next prime minister, she is expected to press ahead with two of Olmert’s biggest diplomatic gambits: U.S.-backed peace talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and nascent, indirect negotiations with Syria that are being overseen by Turkey.

Both tracks face significant hurdles, and there’s a growing sense among politicians and academics in the region that there will be no diplomatic breakthroughs until U.S. voters choose a new president.

A perhaps more pressing issue will be Israel’s campaign to quash Iran’s nuclear program. Israel views Iran’s refusal to give up its nuclear ambitions as a serious threat, and several Israeli leaders have warned that Israel’s military might try to attack.

During the Kadima primary campaign, Mofaz warned that Israel might have “no alternative” but to strike Iran if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kept defying international efforts to investigate his nation’s nuclear program.

The Israeli news media cast the campaign between Livni and Mofaz as “Mrs. Clean” versus “Mr. Security,” a choice between a diplomat and a warrior.

Israelis who think the country needs a leader with long military experience favored Mofaz, a veteran soldier who led Israel’s crushing military response during the second Palestinian uprising.

In the end, “Mrs. Clean” was the choice of Kadima voters who were looking for someone so far untainted by the clouds of corruption that have engulfed many of Israel’s leaders, including Olmert.

Olmert is being forced to relinquish control of the nation as he tries to fend off possible indictment by Israel’s attorney general in a still-unfolding series of political corruption investigations.

leaving office

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is being forced from office by a corruption scandal, and the 3-year-old Kadima Party held its first primary to select a new chief to replace him.

Originally published by BY DION NISSENBAUM.

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