TEL AVIV . I sat down with Tzipi Livni, Israel’s lead negotiator with the Palestinians during months of talks that collapsed last April, to get a sense of how she viewed that failure and to take Israel’s pulse in the run-up to the March election. She wanted to make one thing clear on the difference between her and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party:“Written on my wall is: Jewish Democratic State, two states for two peoples,” she said. “Written on Likud’s wall is: Jewish State, Greater Israel.”Livni heads a small centrist party called Hatnua that has allied with Labor to confront Netanyahu. (Under Livni’s alliance with Labor’s leader, Isaac Herzog, the post of prime minister would rotate between them every two years if they are elected.)She uses the phrase “Greater Israel” to refer to all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. As she negotiated between July 2013 and the acrimonious end to the talks, Jewish settlement growth continued . a major irritant to Palestinians and a reflection of Netanyahu’s dependence on the extreme nationalist camp. When Palestinians see settlements growing, they wonder where their state is supposed to go.

I asked Livni if she would be prepared to freeze settlement growth in the event of any renewed negotiations, a distant prospect. She said she would, at least outside major blocs, because she did not believe settlement expansion served the goal of two states for two peoples.

Her frustration at the breakdown of negotiations was still evident. As always, each side has blamed the other. American officials have suggested that in the end neither side wanted an accord enough to make the sacrifices required. Livni acknowledged that dealing with Netanyahu on the talks had always been difficult, but from her perspective the Palestinians caused their failure at a critical moment.

On March 17, in a meeting in Washington, President Obama presented Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, with a long-awaited American framework for an agreement that set out the administration’s views on major issues, including borders, security, settlements, Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem.

Livni considered it a fair framework, and Netanyahu had indicated willingness to proceed on the basis of it while saying he had reservations. But Abbas declined to give an answer in what his senior negotiator, Saeb Erekat, later described as a “difficult” meeting with Obama. Abbas remained evasive on the framework, which was never made public.

This, in Livni’s view, amounted to an important opportunity missed by the Palestinians, not least because to get Netanyahu’s acceptance of a negotiation on the basis of the 1967 borders with agreed-upon swaps . an idea Obama embraced in 2011 . would have indicated a major shift.

Still, prodded by Secretary of State John Kerry, talks went on. On April 1, things had advanced far enough for the Israeli government to prepare a draft statement saying that a last tranche of several hundred Palestinian prisoners would be released; the United States would free Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of spying for Israel more than 25 years ago; and the negotiations would continue beyond the April 29 deadline with a slowdown or freeze of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Then, Livni said, she looked up at a television as she awaited a cabinet meeting and saw Abbas signing letters as part of a process to join 15 international agencies . something he had said he would not do before the deadline.

She called Erekat and told him to stop the Palestinian move. He texted her the next day to say he couldn’t. They met on April 3. Livni asked why Abbas had done it. Erekat said the Palestinians thought Israel was stalling. A top Livni aide, Tal Becker, wrote a single word on a piece of paper and pushed it across the table to her: “Tragedy.”No Palestinian prisoner release; no freeing of Pollard; no hold on settlement growth. But, in Livni’s account, it might easily have been otherwise.

Talks limped on around the idea of a settlement freeze and other confidence-building measures. Then, on April 23, a reconciliation was announced between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah . something since proved empty. That, for Netanyahu and Livni, was the end: They were not prepared to engage, even indirectly, with Hamas. A long season of negotiation gave way to recrimination and, soon enough, the Gaza war, with nearly 2,200 Palestinians dead and about 70 Israelis.

Livni met Abbas in London on May 15. “I said to him, the choice is not between everything and nothing. And your choice in the end was to get nothing.”Abbas is now pursuing a policy of gaining international support for the cause of a Palestinian state in the United Nations and elsewhere as leverage against Israel, but although this policy may deliver moral satisfaction it shows no sign of delivering statehood.

Another opportunity in the Holy Land has been lost. The waste is unconscionable, tragedy indeed.

Livni said: “For me, any day that goes by without a solution is another lost day. For those believing in the idea of Greater Israel another day that passes without an agreement is another day of victory and taking more land.”