Tzipi Livni's latest attack on the Prime minister, jumping on President Obama's warning of Netanyahu leaked to Jeffrey Goldberg, is not only a 'Wake-up Call" as Livni put it, but more than a wishful thinking by President Obama to see Benjamin Netanyahu replaced as Prime minister by a more centrist Prime minister.
In a column in The Atlantic magazine titled “What Obama is Actually Trying to Do in Israel,” Jeffrey Goldberg revealed back in March of 2010, that President wants to see Livni replace Netanyahu as prime Minister, or at the very least push her to join the Netanyahu government, causing a rupture in Netanyahu’s coalition by all means.
“I’ve been on the phone with many of the usual suspects (White House and otherwise), and I think it’s fair to say that Obama is not trying to destroy America’s relations with Israel; he’s trying to organize Tzipi Livni’s campaign for prime minister, or at least for her inclusion in a broad-based centrist government,” Goldberg wrote.
“I’m not actually suggesting that the White House is directly meddling in internal Israeli politics, but it’s clear to everyone – at the White House, at the State Department, at Goldblog – that no progress will be made on any front if Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right party, Israel Beiteinu, and Eli Yishai’s fundamentalist Shas Party, remain in Netanyahu’s surpassingly fragile coalition.”
"The goal is force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take into his government... Obama knows that this sort of stable, centrist coalition is the key to success. He would rather, I understand, not have to deal with Netanyahu at all -- people near the President say that, for one thing, Obama doesn't think that Netanyahu is very bright, and there is no chemistry at all between the two men -- but he'd rather have a Netanyahu who is being pressured from his left than a Netanyahu who is being pressured from the right, " Goldberg wrote in 2010.
