He started out by damning Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for portraying Iran as an immediate threat and the paramount issue for Israel.
Mofaz, 63, a former defense minister, defeated incumbent Tzipi Livni to take over the leadership of Kadima, the party founded in 2005 by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when many members of his original party opposed his decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
Mofaz and Livni battled for the leadership of Kadima three years ago, with Livni barely eking out a victory by just a few hundred votes. This time, Mofaz dominated the party balloting and won with 62 percent.
In an interview after his victory, Mofaz accused Prime Minister Netanyahu of falsely portraying Iran as an immediate and major threat to Israel. Mofaz said Netanyahu did that in part to push domestic issues to the side and make it easier for him to dominate Israeli politics.
Mofaz said in his campaign for the leadership of Kadima that he would make domestic issues the focus of his efforts. Livni had focused chiefly on making peace with the Palestinians.
In an interview on television last Thursday, Mofaz said, “Netanyahu is not trustworthy. He is not credible and I do not believe him. Look, he took the social protest [that surged across Israel a few months ago] and trounced it, pushing it to the sidelines, and put the Iranian issue on the agenda.”
Mofaz said Netanyahu was spinning the Iran issue. “All the global analysts will tell you that there is still time, that Iran still does not have nuclear capability and that it is only on the threshold of attaining it.”
Mofaz said Israel was wrong to be so vocal about Iran. “The United States is leading the moves vis-‡-vis Iran and this is where the matter should remain. If, God forbid, we reach the stage where everything else has failed and we are under threat while the United States does not do what it needs to do—that is, does not use the last resort, which is a military operation—I will stand by any prime minister and support him in that [launching a military attack on Iranian nuclear installations].
“I believe that right now is not the time and that a premature attack would be disastrous and would inflict terrible damage. Anyone who has studied military offensives knows that in general their results are limited,” Mofaz said.
Mofaz’s family comes from Esfahan, although Mofaz himself was born in Tehran in 1948. His family moved to Israel when he was nine years old in 1957. Mofaz entered the army after high school and rose through the ranks to become chief of staff in 1998, the first non-European Jew to hold that post.
The second intifada or Arab uprising came on his watch and Mofaz’s tactics successfully contained it with minimal casualties to Israeli troops. But his harsh tactics, such as the use of bulldozers to destroy the homes of bombers, were very controversial outside Israel. While Mofaz was a tough warrior, however, he was fully supportive of peace talks with the Palestinians.
As the new leader of Kadima, Mofaz faces a severe challenge. Kadima is the largest party in the 120-seat Knesset with 28 seats compared to 27 for Netanyahu’s Likud party. But polling suggests that, if elections were held now, Kadima would lose more than half its seats. Kadima members clearly elected Mofaz to reverse that decline under Livni’s leadership. Elections must be held by late 2013, but many political observers expect Netanyahu to call elections for this fall.
Sharon was prime minister and leader of the Likud party in 2005 when many party members balked at his withdrawal from Gaza. Livni and Mofaz joined Sharon in leaving Likud to form Kadima. That left Likud with a membership that was at best skeptical, if not outright opposed to peace with the Palestinians. Kadima has been an oddball party, drawing members who want a negotiated peace but who otherwise span the political spectrum from right to left.
Mofaz comes from the right but is now trying to appeal to the left with his emphasis on social issues, protection for the poor and a program to provide more affordable housing. However, the Labor Party, which once dominated Israeli politics, is more closely linked to such issues and seems to be re-asserting itself under its brand new leader, Shelly Yacimovich. Labor now holds only eight Knesset seats.
The political center also provides competition for Mofaz in the person of Yair Lapid, a popular television host who announced in January that he would be entering politics, presumably forming his own party. In the next elections, Mofaz, Lapid and Yacimovich may all be jockeying to attract the anti-Netanyahu vote. Who will win that contest is anything but clear.