Israel's tangled political trio sorting out election results

The three big players in Israel's leadership struggle first crossed paths in 1996, when a rising politician named Avigdor Lieberman helped a former intelligence agent land her first high-level government job.
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Avigdor Lieberman has the power to determine whether Benjamin Netanyahu or Tzipi Livni will become Israel's next prime minister.

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Lieberman, who was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-hand man at the time, resigned the following year and became his bitter rival. But Lieberman and the ex-spy, Tzipi Livni, then both 39, remained friends.

Today Lieberman has the power to determine almost single-handedly whether Netanyahu or Livni will become Israel's next prime minister. Their tangled relationships in the intimate world of Israeli politics suggests that his choice is not clear-cut.

Both Netanyahu, the conservative opposition leader, and the more moderate Livni, who is now foreign minister, are claiming victory in last week's national election. Both are feverishly courting Lieberman, whose ultranationalist party finished third in the voting. The bargaining intensifies this week as they compete to gather a majority of the 120 members of the new Knesset, Israel's parliament, into a governing coalition.

Whomever Lieberman sides with, if he sides with anyone, is almost certain to prevail.

"Both are promising the world," said Danny Ayalon, who was elected to Knesset on Lieberman's ticket.

Netanyahu is said to have offered Lieberman any Cabinet post he wants. Livni has pledged to adopt key planks of his platform. Neither is deterred by a police investigation of Lieberman for alleged money laundering.

So far, the pivotal player is noncommittal.

The election is seen as a triumph for right-wing and religious parties that prefer dealing with Israel's adversaries by military force rather than negotiation. Although Livni's centrist Kadima Party won 28 parliament seats to finish first, the center-left majority that had sustained a Kadima-led government collapsed. Six parties identified with the right won a total of 65 seats, including 27 for Netanyahu's Likud and 15 for Lieberman's Israel Is Our Home.

Viewed close up, however, the picture is more complicated. In Israel, feuds within the two ideological camps can be more vicious than feuds between them. It is an insular place of strange bedfellows and fragile coalitions.

Lieberman's advocacy of civil marriage and the sale of pork, for example, alienate the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Netanyahu wants both on his team, but the Shas spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, declared that anyone who supports Lieberman "will give strength to Satan" and be "punished more than he can bear."

President Shimon Peres must decide whether to give Netanyahu, 59, or Livni, 50, the first shot at forming a government and becoming prime minister. He will start consulting tomorrow with heads of the 12 parties in Parliament to figure out who has the better chance of success.

Conventional wisdom is that Lieberman, 50, will endorse Netanyahu, whose party easily won the most seats in the right-wing camp. Netanyahu's prospects of forming a government are no doubt higher than ours, but things could change," said Nachman Shai, a new member of Parliament from Livni's party. "We know Lieberman well. He's not an easy politician to deal with."

Lieberman put it bluntly last week. "I am not in Bibi's pocket," he told supporters, using the nickname of his onetime boss.

The two men distrust each other, associates say. Lieberman, once a nightclub bouncer in his native Moldova, alienated Netanyahu allies with his abrasive demeanor as director-general of the prime minister's office.

He was forced out, but the political fallout lingered. Netanyahu's government collapsed in 1999.

From Likud, Lieberman moved further to the right, founding Israel Is Our Home that year. Livni moved in the opposite direction, following then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005 when he set up Kadima as a centrist ruling party. That left Netanyahu in charge of a shrunken Likud.

Ideology aside, Livni and Lieberman have remained on good terms. They refrained from criticizing each other in the recent campaign. When the daughter of an Israel Is Our Home activist who works in her office got married, Livni danced with Lieberman at the wedding.

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