New Israeli government or polls: Midnight deadline for Netanyahu

Israel‘s political elite is racing against time to form a new government through high-stakes backchannel negotiations before a midnight deadline.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s right-wing coalition has to secure the support of Avigdor Lieberman’s nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu faction on Wednesday or face an unprecedented second election of the year.

Netanyahu’s Likud and its right wing and religious allies won a total of 60 seats in April 9 elections in the 120-seat parliament in the polls.

How Israel Lost Its Latest Chance for a Peace Process

Last Friday, after weeks of political maneuvering, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Avigdor Lieberman to be his defense minister. A longtime political hard-liner who has filled various cabinet positions for more than a decade, Lieberman made his career with coarse talk: Israel, he said, should “cut off the head” of a disloyal Arab citizen, or take “a lesson from Putin” on how to deal with terror. His appointment served as a climax to parallel dramas: a public dispute between Netanyahu’s most conservative ministers and the Israel Defense Forces, which Lieberman’s appointment will inflame, and a secret peace initiative prompted by Tony Blair, involving players from the opposition leader, Isaac Herzog, to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, which the appointment effectively scuttles.

Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman: Disloyal Arabs Should Be Beheaded

TEL AVIV — Israel's foreign minister has suggested that disloyal Arabs should be beheaded, drawing condemnation for invoking the grisly tactics of ISIS.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman — who heads the ultanationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party — told an event that Israel is "acting like fools ... soft and weak."

"Whoever is with us should get up to half the kingdom," he said. "Whoever is not with us we should take an axe and lower his head."

Palestinian Authority Wants Avigdor Lieberman Arrested For Endorsing Murder Of Arabs

WASHINGTON -- In the latest display of crumbling Israeli-Palestinian relations, the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry called for Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's minister of foreign affairs, to be arrested following Lieberman's remarks about decapitating Israeli Arab citizens, who account for roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population.

The PA’s demand is a response to Lieberman's recent declaration that Israeli Arabs who are disloyal to Israel should be beheaded. Speaking at an elections rally on Sunday, Lieberman said: "Those who are against us, there's nothing to be done -- we need to pick up an ax and cut off his head... Otherwise we won't survive here."

Israel's Foreign Minister Wants to Pay Israeli Arabs to Leave

Last week, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved draft legislation to amend the country's Basic Law to declare that Israel is "the national homeland of the Jewish people" instead of a "Jewish and democratic state," as it had been since the state's founding in 1948, he had to tamp down criticism that the law codifies discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel—20 percent of the country's population.

"There are those who would like the democratic to prevail over the Jewish and there are those who would like the Jewish to prevail over the democratic," said Netanyahu. "Both of these values are equal and both must be considered to the same degree."

Israel files indictment against former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman

JERUSALEM—Israel’s Justice Ministry filed its indictment against former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman in a Jerusalem court on Sunday, charging him with breach of trust and fraud in a case that could further harm his political career.

Lieberman is accused of trying to advance the career of a former diplomat after the envoy relayed information to him about a criminal investigation into the former Cabinet minister’s business dealings.

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Foreign Minister, Resigns After Indictment

JERUSALEM, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Friday he was resigning after being charged with fraud and breach of trust, in a move that could have repercussions on the upcoming general election.

"Though I know I committed no crime ... I have decided to resign my post as foreign minister and deputy prime minister," Lieberman said in an emailed statement, adding that he hoped to clear his name "without delay".

Opinion polls have predicted that the right-wing party of Lieberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would win the Jan. 22 election, and it was not clear if his removal from the race would hurt their chances. (Reporting by Dan Williams, editing by Crispian Balmer)

Original Article
Source: huffington post
Author: Reuters  

Netanyahu must choose the rule of law over Lieberman

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is threatening to break up the coalition if the illegal outposts Migron and Givat Assaf are evacuated. "Migron is not an illegal outpost," the minister said Monday. "It's a community where then-Defense Minister Moshe Arens and the GOC Central Command stood beside the cornerstone at its founding. How did it suddenly become illegal?"

The fact that the highest court in the land determined that Migron was built on private Palestinian land and that it must be evacuated by March does not impress Lieberman. Even the fact that the state pledged to evacuate Givat Assaf by the end of the year and then asked for a postponement until July is irrelevant for the man who heads Israel's third largest political party. From his point of view, if a minister and a top general graced the outpost's founding ceremony, the ruling by the High Court of Justice is meaningless.

Lieberman's position symbolizes gross contempt for the rule of law in Israel, but it seems there is nothing really new about that. The foreign minister is a full partner in the effort to legislate a number of anti-democratic laws, laws that will become the face of the 18th Knesset. And his current stance is nothing more than another realization of his nationalist doctrine.