(Jeff barak - Jpost).Just what does Kadima stand for? Is it a party of the Left, par excellence, as marked by Olmert's November speech to the Knesset to mark Rabin's assassination, in which he said: "The truth will force us to rip away many parts of our homeland in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights." Or is it the party of Shaul Mofaz, who sent oil prices sky high in the early summer when he openly talked of the need for Israel to attack Iran if Teheran continues its plan to develop nuclear weapons. And where does the party's leader, Tzipi Livni, stand on this scale? Does she share Olmert's newly discovered worldview of the need for major Israeli concessions to the 1967 lines if there is ever to be peace, or does she stand much more to the right? Livni's comments last week to Tel Aviv high school students that Israeli Arabs should move to a Palestinian state once it is established would not have disgraced Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Liberman.
AND HER RECENT posturing over the need to attack Gaza following the return of Qassam fire against Israel shows a serious lack of intellectual consistency. The foreign minister repeatedly stresses the fact that she led the internal opposition to Olmert over the Second Lebanon War - even though she lacked the political courage to take her opposition to the logical and principled extreme of resigning after the prime minister failed to stand down following the publication of the sharply critical interim Winograd Report.
The Second Lebanon War was a classic case of the use of Israeli military might without any serious consideration as to how this military adventure would end. An IDF attack on Gaza right now would inevitably lead to a re-run of the Second Lebanon War, with missiles raining down on the southern part of the country instead of the North. And once the IDF had successfully reconquered the Gaza Strip to stop the rocket fire, what then? Would Livni want to re-instate the occupation? If not, how would Israel withdraw? Surely she cannot be suggesting that Israel invade Gaza, suffer whatever losses such an operation would entail, and then just hand the keys to the Strip back to Hamas. If Livni has a magic solution for the problem of Gaza, she has had plenty of time around the cabinet table to remove it from her sleeve and push for its implementation.
On domestic issues, Livni lacks any clear ideology or program. As Israel enters a recession, what are her plans for pulling the country out of it? Will a Kadima-lead government seek to expand the public sector and invest billions in infrastructure programs to provide work for the increasing number of the unemployed or will a cabinet headed by Livni want to reduce government expenditure, slash bureaucracy and hope to unleash the power of the private sector to revive the economy and domestic demand? As of now, we have no idea.
