Israeli FM wants all Arabs out

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has called for expulsion of all Arabs from their homeland, which Israel took by force in 1948.

Israel claimed existence in the year, when it occupied the Palestinian territories during its full-fledged war against Arab nations. In 1967, it went on to capture and later annex the other Palestinian lands of the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and later defied the international community’s refusal to recognize the act.

On Sunday, Lieberman said that Tel Aviv had to redraw what he referred to as “Israel’s borders” to transfer Palestinians out, while incorporating residents of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

He said the basis for the talks with the Palestinians “must not be land for peace, but an exchange of land and people.”

Direct talks renewed in early September following the United States pressure. The process had broken off as a result of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians.

Israel’s construction of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories has become the thorniest issue in the negotiations.

The process is threatened by the September 26 expiry of a self-proclaimed partial freeze that Tel Aviv imposed on the settlement activities in November 2009.

Lieberman has already rejected the international calls for extending the moratorium.