Tzipi the terrorists' daughter meets Tony Blair

AFTER King David explosion,
July 22 1946

"She is already being spoken of as an Israeli leader in waiting. Today the Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni brings to London the campaign to destabilise the incoming Hamas Palestinian government by starving it of cash. Israel's policy - described by a spokesman as putting 'the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger' - has left London feeling squeamish. Tony Blair and Jack Straw will today undoubtedly show solidarity with Israel, saying Britain is not in the business of funding terrorists.(wry smiles at MI6, angry swearwords from countries like Libya that have been hit by British-funded terrorism. -CP). But in private there is anguish that the policy will bring malnutrition to innocent Palestinians and punish them for taking part in a democratic election.

The Palestinians are completely dependent on foreign aid for their survival and Israel's campaign to put 3.6 million people onstarvation rations is foreboding. The EU announced on Monday that it would provide ¤120m (£85m) in emergency assistance to prevent financial collapse, but has kept silent on what it will do once Hamas takes office. Britain is encouraging the EU to pays alaries directly and bypass Hamas. Ms Livni's hardline views were displayed earlier this week when she said that the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was "irrelevant" and could not be permitted to become "a fig leaf for a terrorist entity". (Leonard Doyle, Independent, March 3)

Though she now claims to be more "centrist", in the sense that Ariel Sharon was, Tsivi Livni, 47, first came to political notice as a teenager, taking part in violent demonstrations by right-wing Greater Israel nationalists against US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when he tried to arrange territorial deals between Israel and Arab states with his shuttle diplomacy.

"My family is part of the founding history of Israel," she has boasted. Her father's gravestone bears the inscription, "Here lies the head of operations of the Irgun Z'vai Leumi" . The stone also bears a carved map of 'Greater Israel' extended to take in the opposite side of the Jordan river. in keeping with the old right-wing Zionist ditty that went "The River Jordan has two sides, and both of them are ours!"

Livni's father, Eitan, was the Irgun's head of operations in 1946, and probably helped plan the attack on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, then housing British headquarters, although he was captured by the 6th Airborn in April, and the hotel's west wing was blown up on July 22. The bombing killed 28 Britons, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews and five others. Livni led the Acre prison armed break-out in 1947 and was sent to organise Irgun operations in Europe. Later he became a Herut and then Likud member of the knesset.

Lieutenant Tzipi Livni, as she became during military service, joined Mossad when she was 22, and was with the agency when it organised the failed assassination attempt on PLO official Abu Daoud, leader of Black September. Later becoming a member of Sharon's "kitchen cabinet" she was a favourite of his, and emissary as he began the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. She was the first person he asked to join his new party Kadima, breaking from Likud in the row over withdrawal. Admirers are tipping her as a leadership hopeful.