Livni Livid with Olmert

By LESLIE SUSSER
An article in Issue 14, October 27, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here. Livid at Ehud Olmert's Rosh Hashana eve interview, in which the outgoing premier said Israel should give up the Golan Heights and most of the West Bank for peace with Syria and the Palestinians, prime minister-designate Tzipi Livni is taking steps to distance herself from his proclamations. In the interview with the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, Olmert made the following points, among others: • In order to achieve peace with the Palestinians, Israel will have to withdraw from most of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and grant compensation on a one-to-one basis for whatever land it keeps. For peace with Syria, Israel will have to give back the Golan Heights. • Israel is very close to an agreement with both the Palestinians and the Syrians, and had he stayed on, Olmert would have had a good chance of closing the deals. • Missiles pose the main security problem facing Israel today and having the border a few hundred meters closer or farther won't make any difference to security. • It is presumptuous to think Israel can stop Iran's nuclear drive, when powers like America, Russia, China, Britain and Germany seem to be unable to do so. The Jerusalem Report has learned that in consultations with top officials, Foreign Minister Livni was critical of what she saw as the bad timing of the interview, which put final Israeli positions on the table in the midst of intensive negotiations she is conducting with the Palestinians. Livni was also angry at the implication that had Olmert been able to stay on at the helm, peace would be achieved and that, if it weren't, it would be her fault as his successor. At a Foreign Ministry conference in Jerusalem in early October, Livni chided Olmert, without mentioning him by name, for breaking an agreement with the Palestinians by going public with his peace positions: "We agreed negotiations should take place in the negotiating room, not on the pages of a newspaper," she declared. Livni has also come out against the substance of some of Olmert's key positions. In an early October meeting in Jerusalem with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, she said she opposed Olmert's offer to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas of a framework agreement that would follow the principles he outlined in the interview. She said she was against making far-reaching proposals to get a quick fix and that negotiations should be given all the time they need to ripen into a well-constructed and lasting deal. Livni said Olmert's remarks on Iran send the wrong message to Tehran, and it should be made clear to the Iranians that, as far as Israel is concerned, all options are on the table. Despite her anger, Foreign Ministry officials insist that Livni is taking Olmert's interview in her stride, mainly because she doesn't think it will have a serious impact on the peace process. "Olmert is not relevant any more. What he says doesn't matter," a senior ministry official told The Report. Olmert has also been roundly criticized on the right, for saying too much, and on the left, for doing too little. The Likud's Yuval Steinitz took issue with the contention that in an age of missiles, Israel could afford to forgo hundreds of meters on the borders. "Ignoring the difference between rockets fired from long distances and an enemy perched on hills above Jerusalem shows just how little he understands basic security issues," Steinitz declared. And Meretz's Yossi Beilin castigated the prime minister for "only revealing his true position on the national interest when he has nothing to lose." An article in Issue 14, October 27, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here.