Who is Tzipi Livni?

Olmert is history. Everyone knows that. They are in the street and why would anyone want to keep him anyway? Wonder who is on deck? Have a read. You never know about these things. She is a lot better looking than olda Golda. Sort of sexy and tough don't you think?

Former spy fighting to step into the front line
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor The Independent

"Do you ever see male hormones raging around you?", Israel's Foreign Minister was asked a few months ago. Rather than fudge the answer, she responded frankly: "Sometimes there are guy issues." But she didn't stop there. When the interviewer from Haaretz pressed her to find out whether there had been "a guy problem" in the war on Lebanon, Tzipi Livni replied: "Not only in the war. In all kinds of discussions, I hear arguments between generals and admirals and such and I say, 'Guys, stop it'."

It is easy to see why Ms Livni is Israel's most popular politician, and frequently touted as a likely successor - if not the likeliest - to the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. The 48-year-old former Mossad spy is a strong woman surrounded by strong men and does not hesitate to speak her mind. She also likes the company of strong women, as exemplified by her working relationship with Condoleezza Rice, which has clearly burgeoned into a friendship during the American Secretary of State's almost monthly visits to the region.

Ms Livni was raised in a household of Zionists. Her Polish-born father, Eitan, was the head of operations of the Jewish military organisation Irgun when it blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 28 Britons, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews and five others. The subsequent wave of terror attacks that he led outraged British public opinion, leading the government to abandon the Palestinian Mandate and turn the problem over to the UN, with disastrous consequences for the Palestinians.

"My family is part of the founding history of Israel," she is proud to say. Her father's gravestone bears the inscription: "Here lies the head of operations of the Irgun." The stone also bears a carved map of Greater Israel extending to the opposite side of the Jordan river.

Yet Ms Livni has made a considerable political journey from her early support for a Greater Israel to realisation that the country cannot remain a democracy while occupying Palestinian lands and ruling over a population that despises it.

To the extent that her views are known, she now supports a two-state solution and talks about the need to strengthen the moderate Palestinian leadership, while expressing concern about the conflict with the Palestinians becoming a "religious" war.

Ms Livni joined Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, when she was 22 years old. During her classified time with Mossad, Israeli agents were involved in a failed assassination attempt on the Black September terror group leader, Abu Daoud. In 1981, her first year as a foreign spy, Mossad arranged the destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq being constructed by Saddam Hussein.

Coming from a Likud family - her father served three terms as an MP - it was natural for her to choose the party as she embarked on a political career, and she was elected to the Knesset in 1999 after working as a lawyer.

Rather than admit to an ideological shift, she maintains that she has long been a centrist - which prompted her to jump ship to the moderate Kadima party when it was formed in 2005 by Ariel Sharon, her hawkish mentor.

Despite her prominence in the public eye, however, Ms Livni has managed to remain a private person. She is married, with two sons - a 19-year-old doing his military service, and a 17-year-old schoolboy. But nothing is known about her husband.

If Ms Livni does manage to succeed Mr Olmert, she would be following in the footsteps of Golda Meir, the only woman to have been Israeli foreign minister who went on to become prime minister. But she would also have something in common with another political heavyweight - the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, the only other leader to be elected after serving his country as a spy.