Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote on Friday that he believes Israeli Arab citizens should be given financial incentives to leave the country for a future Palestinian state in what he called a "peace plan" of sorts.
"As for Israeli Arabs, any agreement must include a plan for territorial and population exchange," Lieberman wrote in the manifesto titled "Swimming Against the Stream,"on hiss Facebook page and his party's website, reported Reuters. "An arrangement of this kind with the Palestinian state will allow Israeli Arabs who do not identify with the State of Israel to become part of the Palestinian state. This will, first of all, resolve the problem of Arabs in the Wadi Ara triangle, adjacent to the Palestinian territories, who will be able to become citizens of the Palestinian state without leaving their homes."
The plan will allow Arabs who feel that they are part of the Palestinian people to "resolve this issue of duality and divided loyalties from which they are suffering," he said
Lieberman, who has been one of the most outspoken politicians in favor of the separation of Arabs and Jews, specifically referred to Palestinians who live in two mixed cities on the Mediterranean coast far from the West Bank - Jaffa and Acre.
The comments were made as expectations rise over the possibility that Israel will hold early elections within the next few months due to internal power struggles in Netanyahu's coalition, long before formal elections are due in 2017, according to Reuters.
Lieberman belongs to the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party with close ties to Netanyahu's coalition, and has previously mentioned redrawing borders. However, he has never proposed a monetized incentive to encourage Arabs to move to a Palestinian area.
While he is not giving up hope for a unified Israel, practically speaking, he said, there is no other choice but to reach a territorial compromise, reported Haaretz.
"In the argument over the unity of the land versus the unity of the people - the latter takes precedence," Lieberman wrote. "There can be no compromise over the unity of the people and we will never be able to recover from the loss of this unity."
He continued:
"Unlike the obsessive position of other parties, Yisrael Beiteinu understands that the State of Israel's conflict is not just a territorial one with our Palestinian neighbors, but a three-dimensional conflict: the Arab states, the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. That is why any agreement with the Palestinians must be part of a comprehensive agreement, including peace agreements with Arab countries and territorial and population exchanges with Israeli Arabs.
"Many people now understand that the Palestinian problem is not the main problem facing the Middle East, nor is it the main cause of violence. The events of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere prove this," he writes. "Moderate Arab countries also understand that the main threat to them today is not from Israel or from Zionism, but from radical Islamic organizations like Isis, Jabhat al-Nusra, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. For the first time, therefore, we can now reach a comprehensive agreement, the terms of which are reasonable and acceptable to Israel."
