Liberman: Israeli Arabs who hate the state should lose their citizenship

Any future agreement with the Palestinians should include an arrangement to have at least some Israeli Arab citizens become citizens of the Palestinian Authority, former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman said on Tuesday, following remarks by an Arab-Israeli MK that the country’s Independence Day celebrations are like “dancing on the blood of Palestinians.”

Israeli Arabs and activists held an event Tuesday known as the 16th March of Return near Umm al-Fahm, an Arab town in the north. The demonstration marked the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) — associated with the establishment of Israel and the price paid by Palestinians.

Liberman, the Yisrael Beytenu party leader who heads the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said the march proved that measures relating to Israeli Arabs — who constitute a little less than a quarter of the Israeli population — must be included in any settlement.

“The hate march of Israel-haters is yet more proof that every arrangement with the Palestinians must also cover the Israeli Arabs,” Liberman wrote on his Facebook page.

Any agreement that didn’t resolve the issue of Israeli Arabs would not be a permanent one but rather a temporary ceasefire until the next round of fighting, Liberman wrote. Those Israeli Arabs who made plain their hatred for Israel, and exploited its democracy to attack it, he said, “need to find their place as citizens of the Palestinian Authority and receive [their] national insurance and unemployment payments from it.”

His post did not make clear whether he believed all Israeli Arabs should lose their citizenship, or only those who were plainly viciously opposed to Israel. In the past, Liberman has suggested redrawing Israel’s borders in any accord with the Palestinians so that heavily Arab-populated areas of Israel come under PA control, while Israel expands its sovereignty to include West Bank settlements.

Israel’s Independence Day celebrations are viewed by Palestinians as dancing on their blood and ignoring their tragedy, Jamal Zahalke of the Balad party said earlier Tuesday at the demonstration near Umm al-Fahm.

The Israeli-Arab legislator blamed the government for the ongoing tragedy and bloodshed of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“[The government] stubbornly refuses a historic compromise and a just peace,” Zahalke charged. The government “even rejected the Arab peace initiative in which the Palestinians gave the Arab world [the leeway to offer] all the possible and impossible concessions.” Israel wasn’t even willing to discuss the idea, he said.