Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel, Haaretz magazine reveals in an article on Livni to be published Friday.
Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears. Last week, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy said similar things about Iran.
A long memorandum on the working relationship between the Foreign Minister and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the writers continue in their description:
The most important part of the document relates to the talks with the Palestinians. Livni wrote: "The foreign minister shall represent the prime minister and the government of Israel, and will act on their behalf as the director of the dialogue with the relevant Palestinian representatives, and in accordance with the policy and methods to be coordinated in advance with the prime minster, while keeping him informed."(emphasis added)
So, on the one hand we have George Bush warning against World War III because of the existential threat to Israel posed by a nuclear Iran. On the other hand we have the Israeli Foreign Minister accusing the Prime Minister of exploiting a rhetorical threat for domestic political purposes (I wonder if Olmert has Republican handlers . . .) and shrugging her shoulders at that same rhetorical threat.
If they don't fear the onrushing Iranian hordes, why do we fear for them?
As a bonus question - Why does the Israeli Prime Minister speak of her Palestinian interlocutors as if they were legitimate? Could it be that, unlike the American Israeli-boosters who know next to nothing about how Israel has to live, she understands that negotiations are always better than bombs.
