Lieberman depicts doctrine to Newsweek

Deemed 'Israel's most popular politician', foreign minister enlightens magazine on Arabs, Iran

Ynet|Published: 12.23.10 , 08:31

Newsweek crowned Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman "Israel's most popular politician" in an interview published Monday, in which he was asked on his views regarding peace with the Palestinians.

Lieberman told Newsweek that according to his plan of exchanging populations and territories for peace, "at least half" of Israel's Arabs would no longer be a part of the state. He said the right wing and most of the Labor Party support this idea.

When the interviewer mentioned that some 90% of Arabs oppose this plan Lieberman said, "You have 20 percent of the population that’s the Arab minority. You have 80 percent that’s Jewish. From 80 percent of the Jewish population, 70 percent support this idea."

The foreign minister explained that a resident of Umm al-Fahm "can continue to live in his property, his house, his land (and become a citizen of Palestine), or he can move to Israel".

"Every day, every week, you have another case of Israeli Arabs that are taking part in terrorist activity. You have the leaders of the Israeli Arabs, their intellectual and municipal leaders, saying they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state," he added.

Lieberman said he was trying to "stop this phenomenon of people enjoying all the advantages of a democratic country but refusing to be integrated".

"They don’t want to adopt our values. It’s like in the 1930s. Everyone understood who Hitler was, but everybody tried to avoid this reality," he said. When asked who he was comparing to Hitler, Lieberman answered, "Ahmadinejad."

He went on to compare Iran's quest for the bomb to the Third Reich's aspirations. "Everyone knew that Hitler was a problem, and the Western world sacrificed Czechoslovakia. Not enough sanctions (have been imposed) to prevent them from acquiring nuclear capability," he said.