After Bennett criticizes PM, Liberman tells him to ‘calm down’

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Monday called on coalition partner Naftali Bennett, who heads the Jewish Home, to “calm down” after the latter accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of talking out of both sides of his mouth by opposing a Palestinian state in Hebrew while supporting it in English.

Referring to a joke he had made about his own short temper during his first appearance as defense minister a week ago, Liberman told a faction meeting of his Yisrael Beytenu party that Bennett should see “the same doctor for the same operation to lengthen a short fuse.”

All members of the newly expanded coalition were duty-bound to help stabilize the government, Liberman said.

“I am taking the opportunity to call on all of my friends, and first and foremost my good friend, Minister Naftali Bennett, to calm down,” said Liberman. “At this time, we need fewer declarations. We need to work together in a coordinated, quiet fashion.”

In comments Sunday seen as an attack on Netanyahu, Bennett said: “The time has come to say in a clear voice: the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. It’s impossible to be in favor of the Land of Israel in Hebrew and of establishing a Palestinian state in English.”

Echoing a call last week by Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon on the opposition Zionist Union to join the coalition, Liberman said everyone remembered the national unity governments that had served in situations of national emergency from 1967 on “and I think that the circumstances today merit a wall-to-wall coalition.”

On signs of him shifting from the political right toward the center, Liberman said, “Yisrael Beytenu has always adopted a pragmatic foreign policy. The first man in the State of Israel on the entire political spectrum who spoke about a regional settlement without slogans but as a detailed and developed model was Avigdor Liberman on June 2, 2014 — before students at the Herzliya conference,” he said.

At that time, he raised the subject of his controversial plan to redraw Israel’s borders in order to annex Israeli settlements and leave major Arab population centers on the Palestinian side of the border.

Netanyahu has invested great efforts over recent weeks to expand what, until Yisrael Beytenu’s entrance into the government, was a razor-thin majority of two seats. After talks between Netanyahu and Zionist Union’s Isaac Herzog floundered, Kahlon stepped up to call on the opposition party to enter the government to help restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Relating to his new job at the Defense Ministry, Liberman said he was focusing on office work and studying the issues in depth. He also expressed optimism about the outcome of negotiations with the US over a huge military aid package for Israel. Last month, Washington sources told Israeli TV that propelling Liberman into the Defense Ministry “creates difficulty” for ongoing discussions on military assistance, a claim later denied by a senior American official.

“I hope we will conclude this in the best way possible,” Liberman said.