Israel's new prime minister must form a government

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JERUSALEM -- When Israel's charismatic foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, claimed victory this past week over her nearest rival for the leadership of Israel's governing Kadima party, she told reporters outside her Tel Aviv residence that she would approach her new post with "great reverence."Though she's achieved her short-term goal of succeeding the outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, as Kadima chairperson, her goal of being sworn in as Israel's second female prime minister remains far from certain.One giant hurdle ahead is the task of cobbling together a governing coalition from among the 12 parties represented in Israel's fractious parliament, the Knesset. With would-be coalition partners already promising they will extract a high price for backing another Kadima-led government, getting to the prime minister's chair may mean risking her reputation as the "Ms. Clean" of Israeli politics that Livni has so carefully cultivated throughout her career.As the new leader of the largest party in the Knesset, Livni now has six weeks to form a government. If she sticks to her principles and refuses to get involved in the opaque deal-making that she has railed against for so long, she could face a general election instead.Many pundits are already wondering how the squeaky-clean Livni will take to sticky backroom politics now required of her. "She is going to have to engage in exhausting negotiations that will oblige her to be more guileful and manipulative than she has ever had to be before," the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper noted in an editorial. Many Kadima voters backed the 50-year-old former Mossad agent precisely because she represented a change from the sleaze and corruption that have surrounded the party for most of Olmert's 2-1/2 years in office.Livni's itinerary the other day provided an early taste of the battle ahead. First she called Ehud Barak, leader of the left-wing Labor Party, to ask him about Labor's conditions for remaining in the government, a price that is expected to include several top Cabinet posts. Later, she met with Eli Yishai, head of the religious-right Shas party that controls the third-largest bloc of seats in the current Knesset, to ask what he wants.While Labor is expected to remain in government to postpone a general election that most polls suggest the right-wing Likud party would win, Shas's demands seem likely to pose a major conundrum for Livni. While she is a proponent of the two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- and has served as Israel's chief negotiator throughout the year-old Annapolis peace process -- Shas, whose supporters are primarily Haredi, or ultra-orthodox, Jews, says it won't sit in any government that negotiates the potential division of Jerusalem.Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly made clear that he won't sign a deal that doesn't make East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state. But while the Palestinian Authority warmly welcomed Livni's victory, she will have a hard time forming a government without Shas and the 12 seats it holds in the 120-seat Knesset.Hovering over it all is her old nemesis, Olmert, who despite announcing his resignation last month will in fact remain in office until Livni forms a government. If she fails to build a coalition in the next six weeks, President Shimon Peres would then call a general election, leaving Olmert in office as caretaker prime minister for the subsequent 90-day campaign.Given the tough, and likely distasteful, negotiations required to build a workable coalition, Livni may just decide that a general election is the most practical and honorable route. Some of her allies are urging her to do just that, even though Kadima currently trails Likud in the opinion polls.Such a prospect must bring what these days is a rare smile to Olmert's lips. After Livni spent much of the last year publicly campaigning from inside the Cabinet for her boss's resignation, hanging onto power a little longer may hold quite a lot of appeal for Olmert, especially if it also means Livni never gets to succeed him.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)