Israel Matzav

Kadima Achora voters prefer Livni

Yesterday, I mentioned that one of the biggest problems with throwing out Ehud K. Olmert would be that we could end up with a government still headed by Kadima Achora, with Tzipi Feigele Livni in charge. I'm not the only one thinking along those lines.

A new poll out today shows that most Kadima Achora voters prefer Livni to Olmert by a wide margin. A Shvakim Panorama poll of 349 voters gives Livni 49.3% of the vote, with former Defense and current Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz coming in a distant second with 14.5% of the vote. Olmert comes in third with 8.7% and leftist Housing and Constuction Minister Meir Shitreet gets 5.8% of the vote.

Head-to-head, Olmert does even worse against Livni, with 60.9% going for Livni and 24.6% going for Olmert.

On the other hand, were new elections to be held, Kadima Achora would do considerably worse than its current position. Of Kadima Achora's own voters in the last election, only 39.4% said that they would continue to vote for the party. 42.4% are undecided how they would vote, 6.1% would vote for Avigdor Lieberman's right wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, 4.5% would vote for the Likud, and 1.5% would vote for Labor.

Most Kadima Achora voters also no longer expect the party to finish its term in office. 42% believe the current government will fall in 2007, 10.2% think the government will fall in 2008, and 36.2% believe it will serve out its entire term to November 2010.

So what's so bad about Livni? Let's look at the most important project Livni has undertaken in her nine and a half months in office - UN Security Council resolution 1701. This is what Caroline Glick said about it in September:

Resolution 1701 restricts Israel's freedom of action in three additional ways. First, the resolution named Ahmadinejad's solicitor, Kofi Annan, as arbiter of the sides' compliance. Annan revealed how he will be using this authority two weeks ago when he condemned the IDF's commando raid in Baalbek while beginning his calls for Israel to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon and so enable Hizbullah to rearm, not only by land, but by air and sea as well.

Second, although Olmert and Livni loudly champion the European forces being deployed to Lebanon as an important diplomatic achievement, the fact is that the decision to empower the EU to dominate UNIFIL is disastrous for Israel. While protesting their "love" for Israel, the Europeans are making no bones about the fact that their decision to lead UNIFIL is motivated by their intention to prevent Israel from defending itself.

...

The Europeans and Annan also do not hide the fact that they plan to use their deployment in Lebanon as a springboard for achieving greater influence on Israel in its dealings with the Palestinians. In this vein, D'Alema stated, "I think if things go well in Lebanon, a similar positive process could also begin in the Gaza Strip: The release of [Israeli hostage Cpl. Gilad] Shalit, a Palestinian unity government that meets the criteria set by the international community, and the presence of a UN force to bolster the Palestinian government."

IF THE above is insufficient to convince us that the expanded UNIFIL force, whose arrival is so eagerly awaited by Olmert-Livni-Peretz, is not a good thing for Israel, there's also the Islamic element of the proposed force. Both Annan and the Europeans are insisting that a force of up to 7,000 soldiers from Muslim countries be included in the UNIFIL force. These soldiers are set to be sent by Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey. All of these countries are commonly referred to as "moderate Muslim countries."

Some of you may recall how Bangladesh is treating journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who advocated relations between his country and Israel. Some moderates!

Livni is clueless about war, diplomacy and the English language. Livni spent the entire summer claiming that there was no military solution to what was clearly a military conflict in Lebanon. And then there was this gem - again described by Caroline Glick:

Israel's diplomatic maneuvers were cut to fit the size of our Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni who believes that her job is limited to being nice to other foreign ministers when they call her up on the telephone. In an interview with Yediot Aharonot over the weekend, Livni defended her decision not to engage in public diplomacy by claiming that this is not an important enough task for the foreign minister. It makes sense that this would be her view because as one who understands neither diplomacy nor English, she is incapable of conducting public diplomacy. [That last sentence is a classic quote. Worth of being a meme. I love it! CiJ]

Just last week, Livni proposed that since the 'Palestinians' refuse to fight terror as required by Stage One of the road map, we should skip straight to Stage Two (and give them a state reichlet), and let them 'catch up' later. We've had enough incompetence in the Prime Minister's office having had Olmert as Prime Minister since March. Installing Livni as Prime Minister would trade crooked incompetence for honest incompetence - a step in the right direction, but clearly not enough.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:04 PM