Israel's troublesome minister
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THANKS TO Avigdor Lieberman, the divisive demagogue elevated to the post of Israeli foreign minister, the new coalition government in Israel is off to a stumbling start. Lieberman's role in a corruption investigation, and his disavowal of Israel's obligations to negotiate a two-state peace agreement under the 2007 Annapolis peace conference, raise disturbing questions about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
Israel's previous foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, called on Netanyahu to renounce Lieberman's statement about the Annapolis agreement. "These are remarks that hurt Israel," she warned, correctly.
For Netanyahu to preserve Israel's crucial relationship with Washington, he will have to either muzzle Lieberman or see him leave the coalition. If President Obama wants a two-state Israeli-Palestinian peace accord - the only realistic way of ending a conflict that inflicts enormous harm on all concerned - he will have to persuade Netanyahu to adopt policies he has long opposed.
A sign that Lieberman may not last long as Israel's chief diplomat came last Thursday from the Israeli police. A police spokesman said Lieberman was questioned by Israeli detectives for seven hours that day "on suspicion of carrying out the following: bribery, money laundering, and breach of trust."
Actually, the traits that disqualify Lieberman to be foreign minister lie elsewhere: in his calls for Israeli Arabs to submit to a loyalty oath designed to deprive them of full citizenship rights. Having once been a member of the late Meir Kahane's banned racist party, Kach, Lieberman went on to build his political career on hateful appeals to anti-Arab emotion. He has also said, undiplomatically, that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak should "go to hell" for declining to visit Israel. Lieberman is a humiliation for Israel, and liberal Jewish groups in the United States have been forthrightly decrying his appointment as foreign minister.
But with or without Lieberman, Netanyahu can be expected to clash with President Obama. The Likud leader's declared aim of talking peace with some Palestinians but ruling out a sovereign Palestinian state is a formula for continuing a conflict Obama wants to end.
If Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and rival faction Hamas form a unity government, authorize Abbas to negotiate on behalf of that government, and impose a real cease-fire in Gaza, Obama ought to tell Netanyahu to take the steps necessary for peace or risk compromising Israel's special relationship with America. Those steps include suspending the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, lifting the economic blockade of Gaza, and negotiating in good faith on a two-state solution. These are steps that lead to true security for Israel.
