Loyal Al-Monitor readers would not have been surprised by the report in Foreign Policy regarding the involvement of opposition member and former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and former President Shimon Peres in diplomatic issues that are the purview of the Israeli government. According to the report, the Livni and Peres recommended to US Secretary of State John Kerry that he torpedo the proposed Palestinian resolution to the UN Security Council until after the March 17 elections in Israel. They claimed that adoption of the resolution would hurt the prospects of the center-left in the Knesset elections. Six days before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his friends on the right raised their voices in protest, Al-Monitor reported on Dec. 15: “[Labor Chairman Isaac] Herzog and Livni have convinced top administration officials in Washington that recognition of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines, passed with a US abstention at the Security Council, will push Israeli voters into the arms of the right.”
Big deal. Senior opposition figures recommended to a friendly administration that it refrain from a unilateral move that is opposed to Israeli government policy! Newspaper archives are full to overflowing with Livni and Peres quotes of recent years decrying unilateral diplomatic moves. There are no greater symbols of the sacred “process” that has been treading water for the past 20 years on its way to nowhere and of peace drifting away. Shortly before heading off to Rome Dec. 12 to plead with Kerry to repel the Palestinian and French proposals, Netanyahu told reporters that these proposals would result in terrorism in the heart of Israel. Instead of lashing out at Peres and Livni for their diplomatic activity, he should have sent them flowers.
