By Ofira Koopmans May 2, 2007, 14:08 GMT
Jerusalem - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is Ehud Olmert strongest rival in his ruling Kadima movement, as the Israeli premier faces a growing revolt within his own party over a report that harshly criticizes his leadership during last summer's Lebanon war.
The Tel Aviv-born, 48-year-old mother of two began her parliamentary career just eight years ago and her rise has since been meteoric.
While she has not openly campaigned for the party leadership and premiership, she must have had her eye on the job since former premier Ariel Sharon, her patron from the start of her career as a legislator, suffered a stroke and sank into a coma in January 2006.
At the time, both she and Olmert, Sharon's most loyal ally in his unilateral Gaza pullout plan, were the favourites to succeed him.
But even though opinion polls indicated she had about as good a chance as Olmert to lead Kadima into a victory at the approaching parliamentary elections in March 2006, she stepped aside and let Olmert take the helm.
After the war against the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, however, she increasingly displayed a different approach to Olmert.
In a December interview with Israel's leading broadsheet, Livni presented her own peace plan and, when asked, openly stated that she would not hesitate running for premier against Olmert if she did not obtain his backing.
Unlike Olmert, Livni reportedly wants to break the current stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians by directly moving to stage two of the stalled international peace plan known as the 'road map.'
That stage calls for the establishment of a temporary Palestinian state with provisional borders, but Olmert insists on implementation of stage one, which, while calling on Israel to uproot settlement outposts in the West Bank, demands that the Palestinian leadership disarm and dismantle militant groups.
Livni however believes that moving to stage two first and giving the Palestinians something tangible in advance, would strengthen moderates and boost their chances in the next Palestinian elections, after which they would then be better able to take on militants.
She comes from a nationalistic, Zionist home and entered politics as a member of the hardline Likud party, but has since evolved into a pragmatic, centrist politician, who was among the first to join Sharon when he bolted the Likud and founded the new Kadima.
Her late father Eitan Livni was respected in Israel as a pre- state underground fighter and later as a right-wing Knesset member, but considered a 'terrorist' by British Mandatory authorities, who jailed him for 15 years for his role in the Irgun, a precursor of the Likud and clandestine Zionist militant group that fought British restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Then serving as chief of operations, Eitan Livni was arrested after a large-scale 1946 attack on a British-guarded railway section. Three months later, his group carried out the deadly King David hotel bombing.
A lieutenant in the Israeli army, Livni worked for the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency in the 1980s.
A lawyer by profession, her highest-ranking post before being appointed foreign minister and vice premier one year ago was that of justice minister.
She is generally respected in Israel for her competence shown as foreign minister during the past year and seen as a well-educated, balanced and sincere politician with calm and measured tones.
Commentators say Kadima knows Olmert's days are numbered and a majority of its members reportedly support a move to oust him - to avoid 'dragging down the party with him' as one senior Kadima official put it earlier this week.
Olmert also has other challengers in the party, notably Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, followed by Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz.
But at 83, Peres is an old-timer who unlike Livni can serve at the most only as an interim solution if he wins the party leadership, and who may also be more interested in ending his long political career as president.
And Mofaz, as military chief of staff and then defence minister in the six years leading up to the 33-day war with Hezbollah, may find it hard to deflect blame for Israel's failure to prepare adequately for a possible confrontation at its northern border.
Your Talkback on this Story