What is one to make of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni? Is she the next Golda Meir? Is she a woman of steel who can stand before world leaders and demand that they treat Israel with respect? Can she win a war? Can she - as Golda did in the Yom Kippur War - keep her head when all about her are losing theirs and blaming it on her?
On Sunday, Livni dutifully followed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in voting to approve the terrorists-for-dead-hostages deal with Hizbullah. Despite the government's best efforts to put a brave face on the decision, the deal with Hizbullah is arguably the most humiliating step ever taken by a government of Israel.
In exchange for the bodies of two dead soldiers - Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser - Israel has succumbed to all of Hizbullah's demands. It will release six murderers from prison and send them to Lebanon for a hero's welcome. It will give Hizbullah the bodies of 200 terrorists and so empty Israel's Potters Field for terrorists. Moreover, it has pledged to close Israel's graveyard for terrorists and so has committed future governments to never keeping terrorists' bodies as bargaining cards for future swaps of Israeli hostages. Israel has agreed to provide Hizbullah with information on four missing Iranian "diplomats." And it has agreed to release an unknown number of Palestinian terrorists from prison.
This deal will cement Iran's control of Lebanon through Hizbullah. It also all but guarantees that any future Israeli soldiers taken hostage by Hizbullah will be killed on the spot. Why care for hostages when you can murder them and expect to receive the same payoff you would get if you kept them alive?
Livni voted for this deal along with 21 of her fellow ministers. Unlike her colleagues, who hide behind their surrogates and spokesmen, Livni is out in front - lying to the public about the nature of her action.
Obviously cognizant of just how humiliating and strategically disastrous this deal is for Israel, Livni is spinning her move in a naked attempt to shirk her responsibility for having voted as she did.
After the government's vote, Livni told reporters that she will not support implementing her own decision if the Palestinians Israel releases are "central terrorist operatives." She will only agree to release terrorists who are small-time operators. And if she is called upon to release senior terrorists, she will not support moving ahead.
LIVNI'S STATEMENT is disturbing on many levels. First, it raises the disconcerting prospect that the government never discussed the identity - or number - of Palestinian terrorists it just agreed to release. Are we to believe that Livni sat through a five-hour cabinet meeting and never once asked who she was voting to release? Is it possible that Israel's Foreign Minister never took it upon herself to be informed of the substance of her decisions? Beyond that, how could she have voted to approve a deal that she doesn't understand?
More than anything, Livni's statement is depressing for what it says about her character - or lack thereof. By making this statement, Livni was attempting to evade responsibility for her own actions. And these actions go beyond her vote in favor of this execrable, morally atrocious and strategically disastrous deal with Hizbullah. They consist of all her moves as foreign minister since Regev and Goldwasser were abducted from their position at the border with Lebanon on July 12, 2006.
From the earliest stages of Israel's war with Hizbullah two years ago, Livni preached defeatism. Livni began calling for a negotiated cease-fire that would leave Hizbullah in charge of South Lebanon just hours after Hizbullah attacked Goldwasser's and Regev's unit and began bombing northern Israel with rockets. She exhorted her colleagues that Israel had no prospects for military victory. Livni did this even as it was clear that the only good option Israel had was to fight for a military victory.
Had Israel defeated Iran's foreign legion in Lebanon on the battlefield, it would have secured northern Israel and enabled the March 14 democracy movement to fulfill its promise of transforming Lebanon into a multi-ethnic democracy. Already on July 12, 2006, it was clear that an Israeli defeat would pave the way for Hizbullah's takeover of the country.
Yet in the face of this known reality, Livni called for Israel to capitulate. The policy she advocated involved Israel throwing itself at the mercy of the UN and begging the Security Council to deploy forces to the border to protect Israel. And in the end, Livni's defeatism was embraced by Olmert and her fellow ministers and so Israel lost its first war.
On the ground, the international forces whose deployment along the border was the centerpiece of Livni's policy are a joke. As was foreseen by her critics both within the government and in the public discourse at the time, UNIFIL is wholly ineffective because it has absolutely no interest in fighting Hizbullah. As expected, it has done nothing to prevent Hizbullah's rearmament. It has done nothing to protect the pro-democratic forces in Lebanon from Hizbullah. Indeed, in Hizbullah's putsch last month, UNIFIL forces behaved as if nothing was going on. Far from protecting Israel's border, UNIFIL forces have acted as a buffer to enable Hizbullah to reassert its control over the border unchallenged.
LIVNI OF course, has never acknowledged her own mistakes or share of responsibility for this dismal state of affairs. And now, after voting to cement Hizbullah's victory over Israel, far from accepting responsibility for the situation she has been instrumental in fomenting, Livni makes self-serving and patently false statements to reporters in an obvious attempt to hide her own basic defeatism.
Livni's character and behavior are worth considering because the media has all but anointed her Israel's next prime minister. Every article about businessmen making cash payments to Olmert is accompanied by a fawning profile of Livni. She is down to earth. She looks good in tailored pants suits. She is hard working. She isn't a thief. And she plays the drums.
