Let us all congratulate [Hatenua leader] Tzipi Livni: She got what she wanted. The coalition agreement she signed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves no room for doubt: Livni assumes center stage in conducting negotiations with the Palestinians. Livni will be the prime minister’s negotiator, she will coordinate the diplomatic negotiations and there will be no other communication channel with the Palestinians to bypass her. Yes, the Hatenua chairwoman went to such extreme detail in the coalition agreement that she even inserted a clause instructing all the government ministries and relevant bodies to assist her in the conducting of diplomatic negotiations. So far, so good — except for one minor point: There are no diplomatic negotiations, there have been none in the last four years, and it is very doubtful that there will be negotiations in the coming years either.

But evidently, an important fact must have escaped the incoming justice minister's eyes. Throughout the past government’s term of office, while Livni was hard-pressed to lead the opposition, the Palestinians set a precondition for the renewal of talks with Israel: absolute discontinuation of construction in the settlements. Even when Israel was so kind as to declare a 10-month construction freeze, Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen refused to renew negotiations because the freeze did not include building in East Jerusalem neighborhoods. Only toward the end of the period did the Palestinians consent to renewed negotiations, but they stopped immediately when Israel went back to building in the territories.

That was the previous government’s moment of truth when the verdict was passed on the diplomatic process with the Palestinians: September 2010, the end of the Israeli freeze on construction in the settlements. The frustrated Americans, who had finally succeeded in bringing the two sides to sit around one table only two weeks earlier, now found themselves back at square one. They begged Abu Mazen to continue the talks with the Israelis despite the renewed building in the settlements, and asked Netanyahu to extend the freeze by another three months — both sides refused.

Now, at the beginning of Netanyahu’s third term of office, one of two things must happen to renew the diplomatic process: Either the prime minister must freeze construction, or the Palestinian Authority chairman must take his construction-freeze precondition off the table. With regard to Abu Mazen, we have no basis to expect him to give Livni what he refused to give President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (with all due respect to the coalition agreement that Livni signed with Netanyahu).