Livni: Netanyahu's settlement freeze hurts Israel

[Irish Zionist]

She would do far worse if she had the chance but it's worth a read anyway.

Though the government took a step in the right direction by declaring a ten-month settlement freeze, the "tactical" move will backfire on Israel, opposition chairwoman Tzipi Livni charged on Monday.

"Kadima resolved, and rightly so, not to vote no-confidence against the government because we thought [the freeze] is a correct step," Livni told a gathering of party members on Monday. "Kadima will support any step that the government takes in the right direction."
Nonetheless, the former foreign minister criticized the Netanyahu government for equating the large settlement blocs ? large clusters of communities adjacent to the Green Line that Israel intends to keep as part of any future settlement with the Palestinians ? and isolated settlements that many believe will be evacuated.
"In order for the world to get on board [in support of the freeze], the message and the decisions need to be clear in terms of historic decisions and not in terms of tactics of the moment," Livni said. "The moment that one conducts himself tactically in order to appease America and the settlers for an allotted amount of time, one comes to the realizations that a decision was not really taken."

"I heard the prime minister say to all the settlers, in [the settlement bloc of] Gush Etzion and everywhere else, that we will get through this freeze together and that everything is temporary and afterwards everything will go back to normal. This means that this is not the decision that needs to be made."

"When the government invokes in the same breath both Gush Etzion and [the settlement of] Migron, both the large blocs and the isolated settlements, this is tantamount to harming Israel's interest to keep these blocs under a final status accord," Livni said.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1133383.html