ISRAEL-ELECTION/LIVNI PROFILE Profile of centre-left Zionist Union candidate Tzipi Livni ahead of Israel's March 17 poll

Record ID: 401116

  • Title: ISRAEL-ELECTION/LIVNI PROFILE Profile of centre-left Zionist Union candidate Tzipi Livni ahead of Israel's March 17 poll
  • Date: 11th March 2015
  • Summary: JERUSALEM (FILE - JANUARY 2006) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) ***WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** LIVNI MEETING GERMAN CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL
  • Embargoed: 26th March 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: West bank
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAC3Z6RZK6ESAZPT68QILMP8G7S
  • Story Text: Former Israeli minister and chief negotiator with the Palestinians, Tzipi Livni, is mounting a bid to challenge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling Likud party in the March 17 parliamentary election.
    Fired by Netanyahu in December after cabinet infighting over government policies, Livni, a centrist who served as justice minister and chief peace negotiator in Netanyahu's government, seemed destined for the political wilderness until she struck a partnership deal with Labour leader, Isaac Herzog.
    Herzog has said that should they form the next government, he would serve as prime minister for the first half of the term and would rotate the role to Livni for the second.
    Some commentators doubted whether the alliance would work. Livni, originally a Likud member, has switched parties three times since 2005 and failed three times to secure the premiership.
    A leading advocate of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, Livni has pledged to seek ways to resume peace talks and repair ties with the U.S. administration.
    Livni, a 56-year-old lawyer and a mother-of-two, was once touted as Israel's next Golda Meir -- the only woman who ever served as prime minister.
    She came into politics in the 1990s, following a stint in the Mossad intelligence service while she was a student in Paris.
    From a well-known ultranationalist family, she worked as a corporate attorney before politics.
    She was a protege and a close ally of late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. In 2005 she helped him to broker the Israeli troop and settler pullout from Gaza.
    The controversial disengagement plan, opposed by the majority of his party members, prompted Sharon to leave Likud in 2005 and form the Kadima party. Livni, who along with other rebels from the Likud party followed Sharon, benefitted from government resignations which followed.
    She became Israel's first female foreign minister and held the post during Ehud Olmert's premiership, until 2009.
    A leading advocate of dialogue with the Palestinians and a two-state solution, she was appointed to the high-profile role of heading peace talks with the Palestinians.
    But the negotiations failed, Olmert was forced to step down in a corruption scandal, and while Kadima won more votes than Likud in the ensuing 2009 parliamentary election, Netanyahu outmanoeuvered Livni to form a broad coalition government.
    In March 2012 Livni lost the leadership of her centrist Kadima Party to her rival, Shaul Mofaz, a former military chief and defense minister. She quit Kadima and gave up her parliamentary seat.
    In November 2012, she returned to politics, pledging to "fight for peace" with the Palestinians as a centrist alternative to Israel's right-wing leadership but her party 'Hatnuah' won only six seats in the 120-seat Israeli parliament.
    Her latest move is to a party seen more as left-leaning than centrist in a country where hawkish sentiment seems dominant as regional security threats have proliferated.
    While neck-and-neck in the polls with the centre-left, Netanyahu is still seen as the person most likely to cobble together a coalition of like-minded parties on the right.
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