Israel’s defence minister called Palestinian-Israeli lawmakers “war criminals” a day after he urged a boycott of Palestinian citizens of Israel living near the scene of clashes over the US president’s Jerusalem declaration. Avigdor Lieberman was speaking in a televised parliamentary debate on a motion of no confidence in the right-wing government filed by the mainly Palestinian Arab Joint List alliance on Monday.
Presenting the motion, Joint List lawmaker Hanin Zoabi said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “should be tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, because he is a war criminal.” “Occupation is always belligerent, violent, illegitimate and a basis for war crimes,” she added, referring to Israel’s 50-year occupation of the Palestinian territories. “All the Joint List are war criminals, every one of you,” Lieberman responded. The alliance has 12 Palestinian Arab members and one Jew. “You exploit the weaknesses and advantages of a democratic state to destroy us from within, we have no illusions,” he told them. “You are here by mistake and the time will come when you will not be here.”
Palestinians citizens of Israel, known as ‘1948 Palestinians’ in the Arab world, are descendants of Palestinians who remained on their land following the creation of Israel in 1948, and account for some 17.5 percent of the current population.
Lieberman has long advocated land-swaps in a future peace deal that would see some Palestinian Arab areas of Israel proper handed over to a future Palestinian state in exchange for Israeli retention of some West Bank Jewish settlements. He has also proposed conditioning the Palestinian Arabs’ continued Israeli citizenship on them taking oaths of ‘loyalty’ to the Jewish state.
Source: https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2017/12/12/lieberman-palestinian-…
