The absence of a proportionate Palestinian reaction to the ascendancy of Israel’s far right leader, Avigdor Lieberman, into the mainstream strategic decision-making in Tel Aviv indicates how dangerously the inter-Palestinian divide is overshadowing the Israeli threats and encouraged the visiting European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to legitimize with a public meeting the only man who could abort the mission of his visit.

In a move that threatens to exacerbate the already explosive regional situation, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has signed a deal to bring Lieberman and his party Israel Beitenu (Israel Our Home) into his ruling coalition. Israeli politicians and commentators describe Lieberman as a “strategic threat,” “the most dangerous politician in our political history,” “the most unrestrained and irresponsible man around,” a hawk, a hard-liner, a “fascist”, an “unguided missile” and a “loose cannon,” etc.

“Lieberman’s lack of restraint (is) ... liable to bring disaster down upon the entire region,” an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz warned on Oct. 24.

Lieberman, who was born in Moldova, USSR, in 1958 and immigrated to Israel in 1978, is on record as opposing the road map for a two-state solution.

He is on record also to call for the ethnic cleansing of 1.2 million Israeli Arabs by stripping them of their citizenship and transferring them to a cantonized Palestinian Authority (PA) without consulting their or the PA’s consent. A bill adopted by 12-11 votes by the Israeli Cabinet last week to scrap its parliamentary system in favor of an American-style presidential rule could be his first step within this context. It raises the minimum that a party must achieve to enter Parliament to 10 percent from 2 percent, which would eliminate Arab parties, whose combined strength has never quite reached 10 percent. On May 4 he called for executing elected Israeli Arab members of Knesset for talking to elected members of the Hamas-led Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

When he served as minister of transport in a previous government, Lieberman called for all Palestinian prisoners, now more than ten thousand, held by the Israeli occupation authorities to be drowned in the Dead Sea, Haaretz reported on July 11, 2002.

In 2002 Lieberman declared, “I would not hesitate to send the Israeli Army into all of Area A (the area of the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control) for 48 hours. Destroy the foundation of the authority’s entire military infrastructure ... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything.” He also suggested to the Israeli Cabinet that the air force systematically bomb all the commercial centers, gas stations and banks in the occupied territories (The Independent, March 7, 2002).

In 1998 he called for the bombing of Egypt’s Aswan Dam in retaliation for Cairo’s support for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The Israeli Gush Shalom organization warned in a published letter on Oct 15, not to let Lieberman and his party into the government coalition, saying the move would “shame everyone who advocates it.”

However, instead of mobilizing its media and diplomatic corps to alert the world to the looming threat, the PLO is going ahead with plans to bring the elected Hamas to accept the US-Israeli dictates or squeeze it out of power. The PLO thinks Lieberman’s ascendancy is an Israeli “internal affair”!

“At the end of the day, what we hoped for is to have a partner in Israel who is willing to revive a meaningful peace process that will end this miserable situation between our two peoples,” said Saeb Erekat, who heads the PLO’s negotiations department.

This lenient PLO reaction would only weaken its already fragile internal status and encourage Israelis to deal with the matter similarly: If the Palestinian Palestinians don’t care why should Israelis? And if the PLO doesn’t set on the alarm why should the world care too!

Courting Lieberman, or “Ivet” according to his Russian name, into Israel’s strategic decision-makers’ club is a bad omen that renders the Israeli government as a power without vision. This would undermine the very basis for any negotiated settlement with the PLO and makes the resumption of negotiations farther than ever.

On Wednesday Javier Solana, embarked on a six-day mission to the Middle East to breathe new life into the stalled peace effort. His current mission is certain to fail on two accounts: First for being part of the US-Israeli meddling in internal Palestinian affairs unless he engages Hanmas-led government directly; second Lieberman’s rising star in Israel’s politics.

Solana did meet Lieberman without a similar encounter with Hamas, thus legitimizing him and empowering his agenda with a EU engagement and bolstering his credentials with EU prestige.

The PLO should make any peace process conditional on renouncing Lieberman and his likes out of the process.

— Nicola Nasser is an Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank.