Livni battles to remain opposition chief

Tsipi Livni, Israel\'s former foreign minister, will fight to keep her job as head of Kadima, the country\'s biggest opposition party, in a hotly contested leadership vote on Tuesday. Opinion polls predict a close race between Livni and ex- defense chief Shaul Mofaz among Kadima\'s 100,000 eligible voters charged with choosing a candidate to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a national poll expected by next year. Neither Kadima candidate, polls have shown, is likely to defeat Netanyahu in the next election. Whoever wins will have their work cut out to defend the centrist party\'s credibility as the main party of opposition. Kadima won more parliamentary seats than Netanyahu\'s right-wing Likud party in Israel\'s last national ballot in 2009. But Livni then failed to put together a coalition government that would have given her party real power. Netanyahu joined forces with nationalist and religious parties to form a coalition instead. Though it remains the country\'s biggest opposition party, opinion polls show Kadima is on course to lose more than half its seats in Israel\'s 120-member parliament and could end up with just 12 seats, down from 28 now. The polls also show it is also likely to be out-polled not only by Likud but by the left-of-center Labor party and by an ultra-nationalist party as well. Kadima\'s decline reflects a shift to the right by an Israeli electorate worried by Iran\'s nuclear program, and skeptical of renewing peace talks with the Palestinians anytime soon. \"It\'s the fight of our lives. It is a fight about how our lives will be here, whether Netanyahu\'s bad coalition and his natural partners will continue for another four years,\" Livni said in a videotaped message to supporters released on Sunday. \"Will Kadima take off or crash?\" Experienced politician Livni, 53, a native of Israel\'s business hub of Tel Aviv, edged out Iranian-born Mofaz, 63, in the last party primary in 2008, and Tuesday\'s contest may be similarly close. Married with two children, Livni was the first woman to lead the opposition in Israel and many had hoped she would become the first female prime minister since Golda Meir in the early 1970s. Livni has held five ministerial portfolios and is a former lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces. As foreign minister under then prime minister Ehud Olmert, she oversaw negotiations with the Palestinians aimed at achieving a two-state solution and removing some of the settlements built on the land Palestinians want for a state. The US-brokered talks have been deadlocked since 2010 over disputes about construction in these enclaves built on land Israel captured in a 1967 war. Despite his background, Mofaz, a former military chief and tough defense minister, has backed peace talks with the Palestinians and appears to be just as ready as Livni to find a compromise. Whoever wins, political analysts predict the party will be split. \"Will the two of them ever be able to work together? I don\'t think so,\" said Yoav Krakovsky, a political reporter for Israel Radio. Fighting for relevance Kadima has been written off by many. \"Who cares about Kadima?\" Lilach Sigan, a writer, wrote in Israel\'s conservative mass-circulation Maariv daily, adding it was \"a party with a leader who has all but vanished from public consciousness\". The liberal Haaretz daily called Kadima \"Israel\'s party of missed opportunity\". In an editorial, the newspaper said the party \"that blew in like a storm\" when former prime minister Ariel Sharon founded it after bolting from Likud over a 2005 Gaza pullout, was now \"slowly being wiped off the political map\". Party rivals and pundits largely blame Livni for Kadima\'s decline. They say she failed to lead any robust opposition against Netanyahu\'s pro-settler policies or seize the chance to build on a wave of mass protests last summer against housing and food price rises. Israeli political scientist Tamir Sheafer said the Livni-Mofaz contest, \"has no national importance\" and was likely to have limited impact on the next Israeli election. \"Livni failed to lead a united enough opposition or stake out a clear enough public position, and she has in essence disappeared,\" Sheafer, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said.