Word: livni
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...Livni is the most prominent member of Olmert's Kadima party to have urged that he step down. He has said he will stay on and fight to prove his innocence. (He admits taking money but says he spent it legitimately on campaign expenses.) But if pressure grows, he could step aside, allowing the party to pick a new leader. In a poll of Kadima members, 35% said they wanted Livni as the next party leader, giving her a 10% lead over her closest rival, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former army chief. Livni doesn't try to hide...
...Livni was born into a political family: both her parents belonged to the Irgun, the armed Zionist militia responsible for attacks against the Arabs and the British in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s. But she chose to steer clear of politics, first serving in the army as a lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces, then waiting on tables in the Sinai before joining Mossad, the Israeli foreign-intelligence agency, in which she served from 1980 to 1984. She learned elementary spy craft in Paris, including lessons on how to recruit agents. She also learned the importance of discretion...
...right-wing Likud Party; when he created the more centrist Kadima, she followed. In six years, Sharon named her to seven different ministerial posts. Along the way, she broke with her parents' Zionist views; friends say she'd rather have a peaceful Israel to bequeath to her children. Livni also rejects the Likud Party's vision of an Israel encompassing both banks of the Jordan River. "In order for us to be a democratic and a Jewish state, in the long run, we'll have to give away some of the land," she says...
That doesn't make her a soft touch as a negotiator. Her Palestinian counterparts say she is fair but tough to the point of stubbornness, especially on Israel's refusal to accept Palestinian demands for the right of refugees to return to their old homes inside the Jewish state. Livni's reply: Let them return to a future Palestinian state. Livni has also earned the admiration of European colleagues, who cite her lawyerly logic and pragmatism. And she has made a close friend of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whom she calls at least twice a week. "Tzipi...
...parents would have been proud--even if she strayed from their vision for Israel. When Livni accepted a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, she got a call from her ultra-Zionist mother Sarah: "This hurts me to say this, but we didn't fight for the state of Israel for our generation but for all generations to come. This is about your generation, and I trust your decision." After Sarah's death seven months ago, Livni found out that her mother's old comrades had turned against her because her daughter had betrayed the Zionist dream. A friend...