Special report: Palestine-Israel Relations

    By Ma Xiaoyan

    JERUSALEM, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Israeli ruling Kadima party's primary kicked off on Wednesday morning in 114 vote stations throughout the country, deciding the successor of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who pledge to step down immediately after the election of a new party leader.

    The four candidates of the party are Tzipi Livni, Shaul Mofaz, Avi Dichter and Meir Sheetrit.

    Tzipi Livni

    Livni was born in 1958 in Tel Aviv. She is a leading member of the Kadima party as she is the foreign minister and acting prime minister. She is the second woman in Israel to hold the post of foreign minister after Golda Meir.

    Livni served as a lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces and worked for the Mossad for nearly two years during the early 1980s,resigning in August 1983.

    As a graduate of Bar Ilan University's Faculty of Law, she worked 10 years as a practicing lawyer, specializing in public and commercial law.

    Livni was first elected to the Knesset as a member of the Likud party in 1999. When Likud leader Ariel Sharon became the prime minister in July 2001, Livni was appointed minister of regional cooperation.

    Thereafter she held various cabinet positions including minister of agriculture and rural development, minister of immigrant absorption, minister of housing and construction and minister of justice.

    Livni supported Sharon's disengagement plan and was generally considered to be among the key dovish or moderate members of the Likud party. On Nov. 20, 2005, Livni followed Sharon and Olmert into the new Kadima party.

    On May 4, 2006, with the swearing-in of Israel's 31st government, Livni became vice prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. Additionally, she served as justice minister from November 2006 to February 2007.

    After the March 2006 Knesset election, Livni was described as "the second most powerful politician in Israel."

    On May 2, 2007, Livni called for Olmert's resignation in the wake of the publication of the Winograd Commission's interim report over Olmert corruption cases. She has offered herself as leader of Kadima if Olmert decides to step down.

    Shaul Mofaz

    Born 1948 in Tehran, Iran, Mofaz is the current Israeli minister of transportation and a deputy prime minister. He was a former minister of defense and the 16th chief of the general staff of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

    Mofaz immigrated to Israel with his parents in 1957. Upon graduating from high school, he joined the IDF in 1966 and served in the Paratroop Brigade.

    He participated in the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the 1982 Lebanon War and the Operation Entebbe with the paratroopers and Sayeret Matkal, an elite special forces unit.

    Following a government crisis in 2002, Mofaz was appointed the defense minister by Sharon. Although he supported an agreement with the Palestinians, he was determined to "liquidate" Arafat and was willing to make no compromise in the war against militant groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

    On Nov. 21, 2005, Mofaz rejected Sharon's invitation to join his new Kadima party, and instead announced his candidacy for the leadership of Likud. But on Dec. 11 the same year, he withdrew from both the leadership race and the Likud party to join Kadima.

    Following the elections in late March 2006, Mofaz was moved from the position of defense minister and received the position of transport minister in the new cabinet.

    On Aug. 5 this year, Mofaz officially entered the race to be leader of the Kadima party.

    Avi Dichter

    Born in 1952, Dichter currently is Israeli minister of public security and a member of Knesset from the Kadima party.

    Dichter joined Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, in1974 where he advanced to eventually become its director in 2000.

    His tenure as the Director of Shin Bet coincided with the Palestinians' Al-Aqsa Intifada (uprising). Under his leadership, Shin Bet restructured its mission and duties to serve at the forefront of Israel's security and counter-terrorism efforts.

    The Shin Bet is credited with drastically reducing the number of attacks perpetrated against Israel. Another one of Dichter's successful initiatives included envisioning and planning with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon the controversial West Bank security barrier.

    In September 2005, Dichter left office and became a research fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C.

    Several months later, he returned to Israel and announced his foray into politics with the newly-established Kadima party. On May 4, 2006, Dichter was sworn in as the minister of public security.

    Meir Sheetrit

    Born in 1948, Sheetrit is a Knesset (parliament) member and has been minister of the interior since July 4, 2007. He also served as acting justice minister for three months in 2006.

    Sheetrit was born in Morocco and immigrated to Israel in 1957.

    Sheetrit was elected to the Knesset in 1981 and served as a member until 1988 and again from 1992 to the present.

    He was elected as the chairman of the political coalition in 1996 and of the Likud fraction in the Knesset. In 1998 he was appointed finance minister by then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    In 2001, he was appointed justice minister. In 2003, he was appointed as treasury minister (a minister in the Finance Ministry). He was appointed minister of transportation in 2004, and later served as minister of education, culture and sport until 2006.

    With the formation of the Kadima party in 2005, Sheetrit quit the Likud and joined the newly formed party. He is the minister of construction and housing from May of 2006 to July 2007.

    As part of a cabinet reshuffle in July 2007, he left the Housing and Construction Ministry and became minister of the interior.