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Acting PM Ehud Olmert talks with Tzipi Livni during a Kadima Party meeting in Jerusalem. (AP File Photo - January)
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Rafi Eitain
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Jonathan Pollard
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| By Associated Press May 2, 2006 |
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Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented a new Cabinet lineup that includes the daughter of a legendary Zionist underground fighter as foreign minister and a dovish former union boss as defense minister.
Olmert, who named his team on Monday, has a parliamentary majority in favor of his primary goal of drawing Israel's final border by withdrawing from much of Judea and Samaria, but the ruling coalition itself could be shaky.
Tzipi Livni, the rising star of Israeli politics, was named foreign minister and vice premier, making her the second-most powerful player in Israel's male-dominated politics.
Livni has traveled a long ideological road from the hawkish Likud Party to champion of Israel's withdrawal from much of Judea and Samaria.
Olmert's plan to draw Israel's borders in the next four years, with or without a peace accord with the Palestinians, would mean evacuating tens of thousands of Jewish settlers, completing the security barrier along Judea and Samaria and withdrawing from the areas on the "Palestinian" side of the barrier - setting a de facto border.
However, in stitching together a majority team, he had to scrap his pledge to include only the parties that back the plan.
Olmert's Kadima Party won 29 seats of the 120 in the parliament, the most among the parties but far fewer than the 61 he needs to govern. Two natural partners - the seven-seat Pensioners Party and the moderate Labor with 19, took the count only to 55.
That left ultra-Orthodox Shas in the position to dictate its terms in exchange for its 12 seats, and it refused to back the Judea and Samaria redeployment. However, Olmert can count on the dovish Meretz Party and Arab Israeli parties to provide a solid parliamentary majority in favor of the pullout.
The new Cabinet lineup, which Olmert present on Monday, is expected to take office Thursday, with the government starting its term with 67 seats.
Olmert is a relatively new face in the top job, replacing legendary soldier and politician Ariel Sharon, who was felled by a stroke on Jan. 4 and is still in a coma.
Dovish Labor Party leader Amir Peretz takes over as defense minister, a top post in his first Cabinet appointment - drawing fire because his experience is in social issues, not security.
A second key job goes to another first-timer, Olmert ally Avraham Hirchson, who is to become finance minister.
Of all the new ministers, Livni is most in the spotlight. She is a rare female power figure in a nation heavy with macho military role models, though Israel did have a woman as prime minister early on - Golda Meir, who served from 1969-74.
In just seven years, Livni, a lawyer and former Mossad spy agency recruit has risen from relative obscurity to Israel's second-most powerful politician, earning a reputation as a pragmatic straight-talker.
The stylish Livni slid seamlessly into the foreign ministry in the shakeup that followed Sharon's November exit from the hawkish Likud and the creation of Kadima.
Livni, who followed Sharon into Kadima from Likud, abandoned Likud's decades-long opposition to withdrawing from territory and became a main proponent of Olmert's plan to abandon much of Judea and Samaria.
"We will lead in the direction of two states" - one for Israel, one for the Palestinians, she said, as Kadima's election campaign kicked off in November.
It was a particularly long leap for the daughter of a legendary member of the sometimes violent pre-state underground Irgun that was the forerunner of Likud.
Eitan Livni, who died in 1991, fought British troops and Arabs for years in the Irgun, sat in a British prison for sabotaging rail lines and other strategic installations and served three terms in the Israeli parliament for Herut, a pre-Likud party that claimed not only Judea and Samaria but also the East Bank - that is, Jordan - for the Jews.
Now his daughter will be in charge of directing the diplomatic and information campaign to support Olmert's plan to leave much of Judea and Samaria.
Israeli spy challenges former spymaster's Cabinet appointment
Jailed Pentagon spy Jonathan Pollard launched a court offensive Monday to block the pending Cabinet appointment of his former handler in the Mossad spy agency, his lawyer said.
Pollard's Israeli attorney said she filed suit with the Israeli Supreme Court, seeking to overturn Rafael Eitan's appointment as Minister of Pensioners' Affairs in a new Israeli coalition government due to be sworn in on Thursday. Court officials could not confirm receiving the petition.
Eitan, 79, now heads an Israeli political party championing pensioners' rights, which won seven places in the 120-seat parliament in March elections.
He ran Pollard in an espionage operation that - when exposed - embarrassed Israel and badly tarnished its relations with the United States, its foremost ally. Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, sold military secrets to Israel while working at the Pentagon. He was arrested in 1985 and pleaded guilty, receiving a life sentence.
Attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner said Eitan's appointment was likely to reopen old wounds and further hinder efforts to win his release.
"This could be the final nail in Jonathan Pollard's coffin," she told Israeli Army Radio, charging that Eitan had abandoned Pollard and was therefore unsuitable for a Cabinet post. "A commander who leaves a soldier in the field cannot receive ministerial responsibility," she said.
Key Cabinet postings in Israel's new government
VICE PREMIER AND FOREIGN MINISTER: Tzipi Livni, 47, a rising star in Israeli politics and a protege of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Like Olmert, she followed Sharon to Kadima after he bolted the hard-line Likud Party to create a new centrist political party. A law graduate, Livni spent four years working at the Mossad intelligence agency. Since 2001, she has held a number of portfolios in Sharon's government, including the foreign ministry, justice, agriculture, housing, regional development and immigrant absorption. Monday's appointment makes her the second most powerful player in male-dominated Israeli politics.
DEFENSE MINISTER: Amir Peretz, 53, head of the Labor Party. He is widely perceived as strong on social issues but inexperienced in military matters, making his new posting controversial. Peretz immigrated with his family to Israel from Morocco in 1956, and settled in the Israeli working class town of Sderot, on the edge of the Gaza Strip. He earned his high school diploma, reached the rank of captain in the army and was elected to Israel's parliament on the Labor slate in 1988. In 1995, the father of four became head of the Histadrut Labor Federation. Peretz often speaks of growing up in poverty and his rant against Israel's free market policies has earned him support among those hurt by the growing gap between rich and poor as well as the ridicule of others who see him as a throwback to a bygone era of big-brother socialism. Peretz wrested leadership of the moderate Labor Party from Israel's elder statesman, Shimon Peres, in November.
FINANCE MINISTER: Avraham Hirchson, 65, a member of Kadima. As a long-time friend of Olmert's, he is expected to keep Israel on free market parth, perhaps with some modifications to redress the widening poverty in Israeli society. Hirchson followed Sharon into Kadima immediately after the centrist party was established in November. Formerly chairman of parliament's Finance Committee, Hirchson served as Tourism Minister and Communications Minister in the previous government. A lawmaker since 1992, Hirchson served as president of the March of the Living, an organization that brings Jewish youth from around the world to visit Auschwitz.
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Shimon Peres, 82, a former prime minister and winner of a Nobel Peace Prize. Peres followed Sharon to Kadima after Peretz ousted him as Labor leader. Peres, who is feted abroad as a statesman, will also serve as minister for the development of the Negev Desert and Galilee regions, peripheral areas of Israel that have long been neglected while politicians focused their investment efforts in central Israel. Peres has said that these regions were also cast aside while successive Israeli governments poured billions of dollars into Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
AP contributed to this report.
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