By Uri Avnery, The International Herald Tribune, 22.09.08

TEL AVIV: The polls were wrong, as usual. And in a big way. As usual.
Instead of winning by a huge margin, as predicted until the very last moment by all the polls, she just squeaked through. Of the 72,000 or so registered Kadima members, only 39,331 troubled themselves to go to the polls, and among these she defeated Shaul Mofaz by just 431 votes.
But a majority is a majority. Tzipi Livni was duly installed as Kadima chairwoman. What does that say about the Israeli public?
First of all: This is the victory of someone without a military background over someone with almost nothing apart from a military background.
On the advice of his American political strategist, Stanley Greenberg, Mofaz emphasized the word "security" on every occasion, almost in every sentence. A popular talk-show turned this into a parody: Security, security, security, security.
Well, it did not work. The general, the chief of staff, the defense minister, was beaten by a mere woman devoid of military experience (even if she did serve for 15 years in the Mossad.)
That does not mean that Tzipi Livni may not turn out to be a warmonger. But fact is fact: The Kadima voters have preferred a non-general to a general.
Moreover, Kadima is a party of the center. The very center of the center. Its members are not fervent about anything, neither on the right or the left; they have no strong convictions of any kind. So their decision can be regarded as a reflection of the general mood.
Mofaz presented himself not only as Mr. Security, but also as a genuine right-winger, a man who opposes both peace with Syria and peace with the Palestinians, a leader prepared to set up a coalition with the right, even with the extreme right. He was the declared exponent of open-ended-war.
Tzipi Livni presented herself as the personification of the peace effort, the woman who conducts the negotiations with the Palestinians, who prefers diplomacy to war, who points the way to the end of the conflict. All this may be sleight of hand. Perhaps there is no difference at all between the two. But even if this is so, the important fact is that the Kadima voters, the most representative group in the country, accorded victory - well, a tiny victory - to the candidate who at least pretended to favor peace.
I remember the elections nine years ago. In May 1999, Ehud Barak won a decisive victory over the incumbent, Benjamin Netanyahu: 56 percent against 44 percent, a difference of 388,546 votes. The public was just fed up with Netanyahu.
The response was overwhelming. Without anybody planning it, masses of people streamed into Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, the place where a prime minister had been assassinated fours years earlier. I was among them. In the square the atmosphere was intoxicating. Delirious people danced, embraced one another, kissed. Barak promised to be a second Rabin, only more so. He promised to make peace with the Palestinians within months.
A year and a half later nothing of all this remained. Ehud Barak, the hero of peace, brought on us the greatest disaster in the annals of the struggle for peace. He came back from the Camp David conference, which had taken place on his express demand, with a declaration that was to become a mantra: "I have turned every stone on the way to peace / I have offered the Palestinians unprecedented generous terms / Arafat has rejected everything / We have no partner for peace." With 20 Hebrew words Barak destroyed the peace camp and brought about a public mood that even Netanyahu could not create: There is no chance for peace, we are condemned to live with an everlasting conflict.
Therefore, no one got excited about Tzipi Livni's victory. The general reaction was a sigh of relief and a shrug of the shoulder. So Kadima has voted. So it has a new chairwoman. So there will be a new prime minister. Let's wait and see.
So what can we expect? There are already jokes circulating about a new rock band, "Tzipi and the Tzipiot" ("tzipiot" means expectations in Hebrew). Nobody really knows what kind of a prime minister she will be. Strong or weak. Tough or compromising. Warmonger or peace-seeker.
One can only point at her background. Her father, Eitan, came to Israel at the age of 6 and joined the Irgun underground in 1938 (the same year as I did), when he was 19. He lived all his life under the influence of Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky and his teachings.
In order to understand Tzipi, one has to go back to Jabotinsky. He was was a nationalist in the 19th century mold. Born in the 19th century in Odessa, he lived for some years as a young man in Italy and his heroes were the leaders of contemporary Italian nationalism: the ideologue Giuseppe Mazzini and the fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Jabotinsky wanted, of course, all of Palestine to become a Jewish state. When he founded his party in the 1920s he named it according to this vision: The demand was for a "revision" of the British decision to separate the land west of the Jordan river from the land east of the river, today's Kingdom of Jordan. In her youth, Tzipi sang Jabotinsky's most famous song: "Two banks has the Jordan - this one belongs to us and that one, too."
But Jabotinsky was also a real liberal and a real democrat. He entered the political arena for the first time when he formulated the "Helsingfors (Helsinki) Plan," which demanded human and national rights for the Jews and the other minorities in czarist Russia.
Years ago, the Revisionists used to tell this joke: Rewarding David Ben-Gurion for founding the state, God promised to grant him one wish. Ben-Gurion asked that every Israeli should be honest, wise and a member of the Labor Party. "That's too much even for me to grant," God replied, "but every Israeli can choose two of the three." So a Labor member can be wise but not honest, a Labor member can be honest but not wise, and somebody who is wise and honest cannot be a Labor member.
Something like this is now happening to the revisionists themselves. They ask for three things: a Jewish state, a state that encompasses all of historic Palestine, and a democratic state. That is too much even for God. So a revisionist must choose two of the three: a Jewish and democratic state in only a part of the country, a Jewish state in all the country that will not be democratic, or a democratic state in all the country that will not be Jewish. This has not changed over the last 41 years.
Tzipi Livni, an honest-to-goodness revisionist, has announced her choice: a Jewish and democratic state that will not encompass the whole of the country (we leave open here the question of whether a "Jewish" state can be democratic).
That may not be an ideal basis for peace (what would be the status of Israel's Arab citizens in this Jewish nation-state?) but it is realistic. If she has the power to implement her ideas, she can make peace. If.
Reacting to the election results, Gideon Levy wrote that the heart wants to hope, but the brain cannot. That is an understandable reaction.
Since Tzipi, short for Tzipora, means bird, one wants to cry out: Fly, Tzipora, fly! Fly to heaven! After your election as prime minister, lose no time! Set up a government coalition with the peace forces, use the first few months of your term to achieve peace with the Palestinians, call new elections and submit yourself and the peace agreement to the public test!
That is what Ehud Barak should have done in 2000. He did not take the chance, and therefore he lost.
Will Tzipora reach these heights? The heart hopes. The brain has its doubts.
Uri Avnery is the founder of the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom.