Israel’s ultranationalist foreign minister is facing Palestinian calls for his arrest after saying that Arab citizens who were disloyal to the state should be beheaded.
Avigdor Lieberman, who has in the past described Israel’s non-Jewish minority as a “fifth column”, sparked controversy during a speech in the coastal town of Herzliya, a week before Israel’s election. “Those who are with us deserve everything, but those who are against us deserve to have their heads chopped off with an axe,” he said.
Mr Lieberman has previously suggested that some of Israel’s Arab residents, who make up 20 per cent of the population, could be expelled into a future Palestinian state. His campaign literature calls for one large Arab city, Umm al-Fahm, to be transferred to the control of a Palestinian administration.
After his controversial speech, Mr Lieberman said that anyone who commemorated what Palestinians describe as Nakba (catastrophe) — the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs during the civil war that led to Israel’s founding in 1948 — should be forced to leave. “I am quite willing to donate them to Mahmoud Abbas,” he said. Mr Abbas is the Palestinian president.
The Palestinian foreign ministry called for Mr Lieberman to be arrested, saying that he should face charges of incitement. Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, compared him to Isis, which has beheaded several of its hostages.
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Mr Lieberman was once a kingmaker in Israeli politics, but his Yisrael Beiteinu party is imploding amid a corruption scandal and he is an increasingly marginalised figure. He has tried to woo back voters with an aggressively right-wing campaign, demanding that Israel impose the death penalty on convicted terrorists and re-invade Gaza to permanently remove Hamas, the militant group that controls the Strip.
“We can’t hope to take on Iran when we can’t successfully take on Hamas,” said Ashley Perry, Mr Lieberman’s aide, who is a low-ranking candidate on the party’s list.
The latest poll predicts that his party will win only five seats in the election next Tuesday.
The results were also alarming for the ruling right-wing Likud party of Binyamin Netanyahu, which is trailing by three seats — 25 to 21 — to the Zionist Camp, the centre-left coalition led by Isaac Herzog, the Labour leader, and Tzipi Livni, the centrist former justice minister.
Mr Netanyahu, who won applause from American right-wingers for a speech to Congress warning of the Iranian threat, alleged that there was an international effort to unseat him.
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“This is a very tight race, and nothing is guaranteed because there is a huge effort, worldwide, to overthrow the Likud government,” Mr Netanyahu alleged on Israel’s Army Radio.
The prime minister may have been referring to a group called V15, which has campaigned heavily against him, with volunteers going door-to-door urging voters to install a centre-left government.
The group is bankrolled in part by S. Daniel Abraham, an American billionaire.
Campaign finance laws prohibit foreign donations to political parties and Likud filed a petition this year arguing that V15 was affiliated with the Zionist Camp. It dropped the case after admitting that there was no evidence that the two were directly linked.
“We have no connection to V15,” Mr Herzog told Channel 2 television recently.
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“When I heard that name for the first time, I thought it was either some kind of airplane, or an erectile dysfunction medication.”
Speaking to Army Radio, Mr Herzog said: “Netanyahu is feeling the pressure . . . he is shooting in all directions.”