David Weinberg, Director CIC Israel Office, blogs on the latest campaign developments – a surprise attack on Tzipi Livni and an attempt by Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu to gain lost ground.
Attack on Livni
Kadima leader Tzipi Livni came under sharp attack today from unexpected quarters: leading Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit.
Shavit dealt Livni a body-blow with a stinging column that declares her short-tempered, over-simplistic, and superficial; and lacking in spine, emotional intelligence, and level-headedness. He calls her a “country bumpkin” and “hollow.” He says that she “lacks the cultural baggage, historic vision, emotional tools and personal abilities” to be Israel’s leader.
Shavit also alleges that Livni has made a serious error in not devoting more of her diplomatic energies to tackling the Iranian threat to Israel. “Livni did not understand the Iranian challenge in advance, did not take it on board and effectively did nothing in the international arena to deal with it. Iran’s nuclear program is what turned Livni’s term as foreign minister into a colossal failure,” he concludes.
Shavit is something of an oracle in Israeli media terms. He is considered the country’s finest in-depth interviewer. He is known both as a dove and a critic of Netanyahu, which makes his broadside against Livni all the weightier. In a series of radio interviews today, Shavit clarified that he was motivated to write the column because of the Israeli media’s earlier “collective failures.”
“Every journalist in this country knew that Olmert was corrupt, yet we kept quiet before his election – and that was a mistake,” Shavit told Israel Radio. “We all knew that Amir Peretz was unfit to be defense minister – and yet we said nothing. We dare not make such mistakes again. Consequently I cannot in good conscience keep quiet now about Livni. The next prime minister will have to make existential decisions about confronting Iran, and it cannot be Livni,” he said.
Likud Battles Back
Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu has set out to halt Avigdor Lieberman’s rise in the polls with a new advertising campaign and a slew of substantive policy interviews.
Likud’s billboard and radio blitz, which launched this morning across the country, proclaims: “A large Likud for a stable government”. The party is seeking to send wavering voters a message: If you vote for Lieberman, you are liable to get Livni as prime minister; or end up with a fractious, unstable Likud-led coalition that has to rely on half-a-dozen smaller factions.
In a series of interviews with newspaper editorial boards, Netanyahu laid out a policy agenda that is both clear and sobering. He made it clear that a government under him would act to identify and defend clear “red lines” for Israel in negotiations with the Palestinians.Â
Harking back to a concept – “defensible borders” – that seemed passé in the Olmert years, Netanyahu said Israel should keep unpopulated areas in Judea and Samaria that are essential to its security, such as the Jordan Valley and Judean Desert.
“It’s important to understand what we want before we ask them what they want,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “Our vital interests include a united Jerusalem, not taking in a Palestinian population, and keeping maximum territory with minimum Palestinians. ”
He also made it clear that he would not relinquish the powers associated with statehood – such as borders, air space and electromagnetic space – to any Palestinian government, in order to preserve Israel’s security. “(In any case), I don’t think there is a deal right now, because on refugees and Jerusalem, I don’t think there is anyone on the Palestinian side who is willing to make the minimal concessions that the most conciliatory position in Israel would find acceptable.”
Netanyahu is also seeking to allay the Kadima charge that his policies necessarily would clash with those of U.S. President Barack Obama. Members of the Obama administration understand the need to build peace with the Palestinians “from the ground up,” Netanyahu says, meaning a gradual approach of training Palestinian forces, building up their economy and improving their governance.
Mostly, however, Netanyahu has focused on Iran. American negotiations with Iran should be “closed-ended” with a closed-ended result, Netanyahu says. They should be limited to a few months and make clear from the outset that the result of the talks would be that the Iranian nuclear program would be dismantled.
Netanyahu  says that he has had “positive” meetings with Obama in Washington and Jerusalem mostly devoted to the Iranian issue; and that “no options,” including the possibility of a military strike on Iran, should be taken off the table.
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