TZIPI LIVNI's narrow victory in Israel's Kadima party's leadership election, together with her immediate need to form a governing coalition, will make it difficult for her to give peace talks with the Palestinians and the Syrians the urgency they deserve.
Substantial progress has been made on both fronts in recent months under outgoing Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, despite his growing weakness in a corruption scandal. Ms Livni has proved an adept negotiator with the Palestinians, but it is hard to see how she can bring the process further before she secures her position as prime minister, despite international pressure. Israel's fractious political system makes both objectives hazardous.
Ms Livni originally came from the rejectionist right-wing of Israeli politics, but now accepts that a two-state settlement with the Palestinians is the best way to secure Israel's future as a Jewish state. She understands how urgent it is to reach such a settlement before conditions on the ground make it impossible and believes the negotiations under way are the only way it can be attained. But one of her potential coalition partners, the fundamentalist Shas party, flatly refuses to bargain over the future of Jerusalem, which would certainly jeopardise such talks. An alternative coalition to include the left-wing Meretz alongside Kadima's existing Labor partner may prove a step too far for her own party colleagues. But they all confront the prospect of fresh elections in which the right-wing Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejects the existing talks, would probably win.
Sceptics point with reason to several other flaws in the qualified optimism Ms Livni brings to this onerous task. Her own and Mr Olmert's political weaknesses are matched on the Palestinian side by Mahmoud Abbas's leadership. He has lost control of Gaza to Hamas and is criticised on the West Bank for accommodating the Israelis too much on the 1967 borders, Israeli settlements and the return of Palestinian refugees. Quite aside from the Hamas fundamentalists, a younger generation of Palestinians resents the old guard he represents, and the elongated talks and relentless Israeli security and settlement pressure have exhausted most hopes for a breakthrough.
Precisely for that reason Mr Abbas and Ms Livni have worked together in the belief that a last dash for a two-state settlement could succeed if political conditions come right. That would release new energy on both sides, which would be enormously helped by international goodwill. Recent progress on the Syrian-Israeli front could help trigger movement on the Palestinian one if Ms Livni succeeds in forming a coalition. She must hope that President Bush would want to give that all the help he can before leaving office.
It is a tenuous basis on which to make progress, since the hard rejectionists on both sides reject centrist efforts to reach a settlement. Experience from elsewhere, including Ireland, suggests that is not a sound basis on which to make peace. But Ms Livni is nothing if not determined and could surprise if her bargaining skills are matched by luck and favourable circumstances.