Kadima leaders seek unity after Mofaz’s win in bitter leadership battle

Senior politicians in Kadima asserted on Wednesday that the party would unite around its new leader Shaul Mofaz, elected Tuesday by a landslide over incumbent Tzipi Livni, and said its challenge now was to work to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led government.

“Now is the time for unity,” said Dalia Itzik, the chair of the party’s Knesset faction. She also joined the rest of the party leadership in urging the defeated Livni to stay in the party. “I can’t imagine her packing up and going home,” said Itzik. “She’s still a young woman.”

Livni had telephoned Mofaz to congratulate him after midnight Tuesday, but would not answer questions about her future. The leadership race between the two had been bitter, sometimes degenerating into personal attacks, with Livni charging that Mofaz had refused to accept her victory in a similar leadership tussle four years ago, and Mofaz branding Livni an ineffectual opposition leader.

In his victory speech in the small hours of Wednesday morning, Mofaz also stressed the need for unity and urged Livni not to bolt politics. Mofaz also made a point of inviting those Kadima Knesset members who had supported Livni in the leadership race to join him onstage as he made his victory speech, in which he notably highlighted a commitment to issues of social justice — evidently seeking to widen his appeal beyond his fields of experience in defense and security.

Kadima leaders ruled out the notion that Mofaz — who enjoys only a slightly better relationship with Netanyahu than does Livni — would now seek to bring Kadima into the governing coalition.

And Likud leaders on Wednesday sounded equally opposed to the idea, even though Netanyahu paid Mofaz the courtesy of calling him Wednesday to congratulate him on his success. The Likud slammed Kadima as a party falling apart, and Ophir Akunis, a Likud MK who is close to Netanyahu, castigated Mofaz, recalling derisively that Mofaz had initially competed for the Likud leadership in 2005 under the slogan “You don’t leave your own home,” when Ariel Sharon broke away to form Kadima. After considerable vacillation, Mofaz then decided to follow Sharon and bolt for Kadima.

Still, Tzachi Hanegbi, a former Kadima MK and minister, said he would work to foster a dialogue between Mofaz and Netanyahu.

With Israel facing such acute challenges as the Iranian nuclear threat, said Hanegbi in an Israel Radio interview, there was every reason to have Mofaz — a former chief of staff and defense minister — adding his expertise “in the national interest” to that of Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Hanegbi noted that he had always regarded the failure of Netanyahu and Livni to establish a unity government after the 2009 general elections as a missed opportunity to promote a more consensual national agenda. The current political calendar, however, with elections likely in the next year, left no room for that kind of arrangement now, he said.

Mofaz was Tuesday elected the new head of Kadima, the biggest party in the Knesset, taking 61.7 percent of the vote to Livni’s 37.2%.