Livni: Israel's rising star and most powerful woman

The former Mossad spy has been a rising star on Israel’s political scene for years but only emerged publicly as a candidate for prime minister in July, shortly before Olmert announced he would resign to battle corruption charges.

Opinion polls show Livni as front-runner in Wednesday Kadima party leadership vote, but she faces competition from Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, a hawkish former general who has stressed his security credentials.

Both candidates would still probably lose to right-wing Likud party chairman Benjamin Netanyahu if a general election were held.

Livni, a 50-year-old lawyer who defied her staunch nationalist background to become the number two in government and in Kadima, is today the most popular minister and the country’s most powerful woman since Golda Meir, who was prime minister from 1969 to 1974.

She brushed off the comparisons earlier this month, however, telling a local paper: "I am not Golda Meir the second, but Tzipi Livni the first, and I will lead Israel in the coming period."

The influential Forbes magazine has ranked her 52 on its list of the world’s most powerful women.

As foreign minister, Livni heads the Israeli negotiating team in peace talks with the Palestinians that were revived at a U.S. conference last November.

She has met frequently with her U.S. counterpart Condoleezza Rice and senior Palestinian diplomat Ahmed Qorei to discuss core issues in the decades-old conflict in the hopes of concluding a full peace agreement by January 2009.

However Livni has remained tight-lipped about the latest round of peace talks, insisting they take place away from the media spotlight.

Ironically, Livni was born to be a luminary in the right-wing Likud. Her Polish-born father Eitan was director of operations for the Irgun, the hardline nationalist group that fought British rule before Israel’s creation in 1948.

Her mother Sarah was also an Irgun militant, and Tzipi was brought up steeped in the vision of a Greater Israel that would include all of the West Bank.

But under the tutelage of former prime minister Ariel Sharon she became convinced that the only way to preserve Israel as a Jewish state was to relinquish at least some of the land occupied in the 1967 Six Day War.

She was among the first ministers to join Sharon in breaking with Likud in 2005 to found Kadima, a party established on the idea of unilateral withdrawal from parts of the occupied territories.

Livni was born in Tel Aviv on July 8, 1958. She received a law degree from Bar-Ilan University, and specialized in commercial, constitutional, and real estate law in a private firm for 10 years before entering public life.

Earlier this year she confirmed press reports saying she had worked for four years in Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence agency as an undercover spy.

An MP since 1999, she was appointed to the cabinet in March 2001, becoming minister of regional cooperation. She has since also held the agriculture, immigration and justice portfolios.

She is married and has two children.