Lieberman
Is Not An
Israeli ‘Internal Affair’
By Nicola Nasser
27 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The absence of a proportionate
Palestinian reaction to the ascendancy of Israel’s far right leader,
Avigdor Lieberman, into the mainstream strategic decision-making in
Tel Aviv has indicated of how dangerously the inter-Palestinian divide
is overshadowing the Israeli threats and encouraged the visiting European
Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to legitimize with a public
meeting the only man who could abort not only the mission of his visit
but all prospects of regional peace.
In a move that threatens to destabilize the already explosive regional
situation, heralds an Israeli escalation towards a war with Iran in
tandem with the U.S.-led anti-Iran campaign and pre-empts any credible
prospects for initiating a new peace process if not reviving the old
“Road Map”-based process, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
signed a deal last week to bring Lieberman and his party Israel Beitenu
(Israel Our Home) into his ruling coalition, in a bid for political
survival following the fiasco in Lebanon, thus consolidating his power
but confusing whatever Israel has of a peace vision.
According to Israeli media on the eve and in the wake of the ominous
deal, that has yet to be endorsed by the Knesset, Israeli politicians
and commentators described Lieberman as a “strategic threat,”
“the most dangerous politician in our political history,”
“the most unrestrained and irresponsible man around,” a
hawk, a hardliner, Israel's far right leader, extreme and ultra right-winger,
a “fascist” and a leader of a “fascist party,”
a “detestable racist,” “unguided missile” and
a “loose cannon,” etc.
“Lieberman's lack of restraint (is) … liable to bring disaster
down upon the entire region,” Israeli Haaretz editorial warned
on Oct. 24.
Hebrew University political science professor Zeev Sternhell, said Lieberman
may be “the most dangerous politician in our political history”
because of his “cocktail of nationalism, authoritarianism and
dictatorial mentality” and because, unlike previous extreme-right
figures he was not “marginalized.” Professor Sternhell added:
“I cannot forget that Mussolini came to power with only 30 members
of parliament.”
Lieberman, who was born in Moldova, USSR, in 1958 and immigrated to
Israel in 1978, is on record as opposing the Road Map for a two-state
solution, which was envisioned by the US President George W. Bush, drafted
by the Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia and later adopted by the
UN Security Council Resolution 1515; the process however was pronounced
dead by Israel, the Arab League and scrapped on Tuesday by Spanish Foreign
Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos as a “too late” effort.
Speaking to reporters Monday, Lieberman questioned the wisdom of past
peace deals where Israel ceded occupied land to Arab adversaries.
He is on record also to call for the ethnic cleansing of 1.2 million
Israeli Arabs by stripping them of their citizenship and transferring
them to a cantonized Palestinian Authority (PA) without consulting their
or the PA’s consent. A bill adopted by 12-11 votes by the Israeli
cabinet last week to scrap its parliamentary system in favor of an American-style
presidential rule could be his first step within this context; it raises
the minimum that a party must achieve to enter parliament to 10% from
2%, which would eliminate Arab parties, whose combined strength has
never quite reached 10%.
In 2004 he published his book “My Truth,” a call to draw
Israel's borders to exclude Arab citizens and include illegal Israeli
colonial settlements Israel built on occupied Palestinian West Bank
territory; he himself lives with his family in the colony of Nokdim.
Earlier he spoke of “transfer” of Arab citizens, Gershom
Gorenberg wrote in the Jewish daily Forward on October 20, 2006. “The
problem with the Arabs inside Israel must come before the Palestinian
problem,” he said.
On May 4 he called also for executing elected Israeli Arab members of
Knesset for talking to elected members of the Hamas-led Palestinian
Legislative Council (PLC). Four days later American The Anti-Defamation
League (ADL) expressed grave concern over his inciteful statements.
When he served as minister of transport in a previous government, Lieberman
called for all Palestinian prisoners, now more than ten thousand, held
by the Israeli occupation authorities to be drowned in the Dead Sea
and offered to provide the buses, Ha'aretz reported on July 11, 2002.
In 2002, Lieberman declared, “I would not hesitate to send the
Israeli army into all of Area A [the area of the West Bank ostensibly
under Palestinian Authority control] for 48 hours. Destroy the foundation
of all the authority's military infrastructure ... not leave one stone
on another. Destroy everything.” He also suggested to the Israeli
cabinet that the air force systematically bomb all the commercial centers,
gas stations and banks in the occupied territories (The Independent,
March 7, 2002).
In 1998 he called for the bombing of Egypt's Aswan Dam in retaliation
for Cairo's support for the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
The Israeli Gush Shalom organization warned in a published letter on
Oct 15, not to let Lieberman and his party into the government coalition,
saying the move would “shame everyone who advocates it.”
However, instead of mobilizing its media and diplomatic corps to alert
the world on the looming threat, the PLO kept absorbed by the internal
divide and obsessed with plans on how to bring the elected Hamas to
accept the U.S.-adopted Israeli dictates or squeeze it out of power,
except for a rare statement that offhandedly shrugged Lieberman’s
ascendancy as an Israeli “internal affair”!
“At the end of the day, what we hoped for is to have a partner
in Israel who is willing to revive a meaningful peace process that will
end this miserable situation between our two peoples,” said Saeb
Erekat, who heads the PLO’s negotiations department, whose mission
has been confined recently to educating Hamas and the Palestinian people
on how to better understand the “realpolitics” of the US
and EU-backed Israeli dictates.
Lieberman’s ascendancy could in no way be dealt with by whoever
Palestinian is in the driving seat neither as an internal Israeli affair
nor as a threat that could be frivolously shrugged off with levity;
this would take irresponsibility too far to be justified, regardless
of whatever pretexts might be cited.
This lenient PLO reaction would only weaken its already fragile internal
status and encourage Israelis to deal with the matter similarly; if
the Palestinian Palestinians don’t care why should Israelis and
if the PLO doesn’t set on the alarm why should the world care
too! May be the PLO should be reminded of Israel’s reaction to
the electoral victory of Austria's far right leader Jörg Haider
in 1999 to entice it into action?
Internally, the PLO’s arguments with Hamas are based on accepting
the US-Israeli conditions as a prelude to being courted by the international
community as a peace partner, but Olmert-Lieberman deal would eliminate
even the prospect of finding the old ever-illusive Israeli partner,
which weakens the basic PLO argument in the internal divide.
Courting Lieberman, or "Ivet" according to his Russian name,
into Israel’s strategic decision-makers’ club is a bad omen
that renders the Israeli government as a power without vision, be it
unilateral or otherwise, which undermines the very bases for any potential
bilateral negotiated settlement with the PLO and makes the resumption
of negotiations farther than ever.
Lieberman’s inclusion into Israel’s mainstream decision-making
is -- by premeditation or by coincidence -- pre-empting Palestinian,
regional and international efforts to capitalize on the indecisive Lebanon
war to either revive the old peace process or to initiate a new one,
or in the best of optimistic scenarios to initiate a fundamental change
in the regional peace-making from conflict management to conflict resolution.
On Wednesday Javier Solana, embarked on a six-day mission to the Middle
East to breathe new life into the stalled peace effort; his efforts
have been fruitless for years; however his current effort is certain
to fail on two accounts: First for being part of the US-Israeli meddling
in internal Palestinian affairs unless he makes a surprise respect to
the Palestinian democratic choice and engages Hanmas-led government
directly; second Lieberman’s rising star in Israel’s politics
which renders its ruling coalition a government without any vision conducive
to any peace process unless Solana makes a surprise breakthrough by
taking the role the PLO is not taking vis-à-vis Lieberman’s
upcoming role.
His efforts are doomed because both surprises are wishful thinking so
long as the 25-member EU bloc he represents is still unable to match
its political weight with its economic clout to tell Washington that
the EU is its political partner and follower in world affairs.
Solana did meet Lieberman without at least balancing his move with a
similar encounter with Hamas, thus legitimizing him and empowering his
agenda with an EU engagement and bolstering his credentials with EU
prestige. Solana also bypassed the democratically elected representative
government of the Palestinian people. In both cases he was indirectly
encouraged by PLO’s leniency vis-à-vis Lieberman and militancy
vis-à-vis Hamas.
The PLO and whoever is self-appointed, involved, asked or enforcing
himself as a sponsor of peace-making should make any peace process conditional
on renouncing Lieberman and his likes out of the process instead on
hinging the process on the commitment of the Palestinian “functional”
and apolitical autonomous government to political conditions dictated
by Israel and the US, a commitment honored strictly by the PLO.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and
Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied
Palestinian territories.
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