Quote:
Divide Israel, Arabs like Cyprus: Israeli deputy PM
(AFP)
5 November 2006
LONDON - Israel should copy the division of Cyprus to deal with the “problem” of its large Arab minority, the country’s new Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
The firebrand strategic affairs minister said the pain of Cyprus splitting into two along ethnic lines was worth the gain in an interview with the British weekly broadsheet.
And the leader of the Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is Our Home) party, who was sworn into office on Monday, branded Iran “the basis of an axis of evil which is a problem for all the world”.
The hardliner insisted that the best way to bring about peace in the Middle East would be for Jews and Arabs to live completely apart—including Israeli Arabs, who make up nearly a fifth of Israel’s citizens.
Lieberman, 48, is well-known for wanting to keep Israeli settlements in the West Bank while “in return” redrawing Israel’s border to eject thousands of Israeli Arabs.
“Minorities are the biggest problem in the world,” the minister said.
“I think separation between two nations is the best solution. Cyprus is the best model. Before 1974, the Greeks and Turks lived together and there were frictions and bloodshed and terror.
“After 1974, they constituted all Turks on one part of the island, all Greeks on the other part of the island and there is stability and security.”
Reminded that thousands were forcibly driven from their homes, Lieberman said: “Yes, but the final result was better.”
An aide fleshed out Lieberman’s comments by adding: “Israeli Arabs don’t have to go. But if they stay they have to take an oath of allegiance to Israel as a Jewish Zionist state.”
Lieberman said Israel’s Arab minority was a “problem” which required “separation” from the Jewish state.
“We established Israel as a Jewish country”, he said.
“I want to provide an Israel that is a Jewish, Zionist country. It’s about what kind of country we want to see in the future. Either it will be an (ethnically mixed) country like any other, or it will continue as a Jewish country.”
Lieberman’s responsibilities include coordinating efforts to counter arch-enemy Iran’s nuclear programme.
Lieberman called for the world to unite against “an axis of evil” led by Tehran.
“Every week, the president of Iran declares his intention to destroy us,” he said.
“Iran is the biggest threat. It’s a problem for the whole world but Israel really has a bad location. We are on the front line between the clash of civilisations between the free world and the extremist Islamic world.”
The arrival of Lieberman in the government marked a turn to the right for a cabinet that took office only in May on a lynchpin of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s centrist Kadima party and its main coalition partner, the centre-left Labour party.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/November/middleeast_November70.xml§ion=middleeast
