Main Israeli negotiators

Key Israeli politicians and negotiators featuring in The Palestine Papers

Last Modified: 23 Jan 2011 20:46 GMT
Tzipi Livni

Role: Former Israeli foreign minister; current opposition leader and head of Kadima party

Livni has served in the Knesset (Israeli parliament)since

1999. She has held a variety of cabinet posts, including
stints as housing minister, agriculture minister and justice
minister.

She was the foreign minister and Israel's lead negotiator

during the key years covered by The Palestine Papers.
She represented the Israeli government during dozens of
meetings before and after the Annapolis conference,
usually appearing with Tal Becker, her senior adviser.

Livni lost her post as foreign minister in 2009; her Kadima

party won the most seats in Israel's parliamentary
elections, but failed to assemble a governing coalition. She
has been serving as Israel's opposition leader since then.

Livni was born in Tel Aviv. She served for a time in Israel's
Mossad spy agency, then left to attend law school; she practiced commercial law for a decade before entering
politics.

Ehud Olmert

Role: Former Israeli prime minister

Olmert was the prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009,

when many of the key events described in the Palestine
Papers took place. He spent much of his professional
career in politics: Olmert was first elected to the Knesset in
1973 and remained a member for 20 years, rising through
the ranks of the Likud party. He then served two terms as
the mayor of Jerusalem before returning to the Knesset in
2003 and assuming the post of prime minister in 2006.

His domestic popularity remained quite low for much of his

time as prime minister. His handling of the 2006 Lebanon
war was deeply unpopular in Israel; tens of thousands of
people staged a rally in 2007 to demand his resignation. He
was also dogged by persistent allegations of corruption, for
which he was eventually indicted after leaving office.

Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, was Israel's main negotiator during Olmert’s time in office. Olmert himself appears
in only a handful of these documents, mostly in notes preceding or following his one-on-one meetings with Mahmoud
Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Udi Dekel

Role: Former head of the Israeli Negotiations Unit under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

Dekel worked in the Prime Minister's Office to co-ordinate

the work of the negotiation team.

He helped with the formation of Israel's positions in the

talks and took part in several rounds of talks on a final
status agreement. Before his assignment to the Olmert
Administration as head of staff, Dekel served as the head
of the Israel Defence Forces Strategic Planning Division.

After his tenure at the prime minister's office, he was highly

critical of the negotiating tactics of Olmert and Livni in their
dealings with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority
president, and Ahmed Qurei, the head of Abbas'
negotiating team.

The Palestine Papers reveal that Dekel has been trying to

shift the 1967 borders as a baseline for the negotiations,
due to new "facts on the ground" that were created as an answer to a "terror war" that was launched by the
Palestinians.

Amos Gilad

Role: Former head of the Israeli defence ministry's political-security branch and Israel's caretaker co-ordinator in the
occupied territories.

Gilad was said to enjoy more influence over Israeli

government policy than many of those who outranked him
in the government hierarchy.

Before his appointment at the defence ministry, he served

as the director of the research division of the Israeli army's
intelligence branch and also as army spokesman.

In his side role as Israel's special envoy to Egypt, he was

also intimately involved in talks over the fate of captive
Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. He was briefly suspended from
that position in February 2009 after he criticised Olmert,
claiming that the prime minister was hindering efforts to
free Shalit.

The Palestine Papers show that Gilad, who continues to serve the Israeli government as an adviser to Ehud Barak,
the defence minister, held multiple conversations with Palestinian Authority negotiators on the situation in Gaza prior
to the 2008-2009 war.

Tal Becker

Role: Senior adviser to Tzipi Livni

Becker was Tzipi Livni’s senior policy adviser from 2006

through 2009, and almost always accompanied her to
meetings with Palestinian negotiators.

Becker is a lawyer who spent much of his career working

for the Israeli government: He is a former lawyer at the
Israeli mission to the United Nations, and a former director
of the international law department at the Israeli foreign
ministry. He was involved in negotiations during both the
Oslo Accords and the Camp David summit.

Becker speaks far less often than Livni in the Palestine

Papers, and his comments are usually clarifications –
interpretations of international law, or details from past
negotiations. The documents give the impression of an
influential behind-the-scenes figure with a limited "public"
role in meetings with Palestinians.

He does occasionally weigh in on substantive issues,

discussing at one point the need for two states: "Divided.
All Israeli. All Palestinian," he said.

Tal Becker was born in France, but spent most of his childhood in Australia.
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Source: Al Jazeera