Itongadol/AJN.- Peres rejects foreign minister\’s idea of exchanging heavily Arab-populated areas in pre-1967 lines for additional West Bank land.
Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas rejected Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman\’s idea of swapping heavily Arab-populated land in pre-1967 lines for additional West Bank territory in a meeting Wednesday with MK Ahmed Tibi (Ta\’al).
Abbas told Tibi that Liberman\’s proposal was a provocation. He said the idea had not been raised in American-mediated negotiations with Israel, and if it would, it would be completely rejected.
Liberman mocked Arab MKs and other Israeli Arabs for criticizing his proposal in a statement on his Facebook page. He said they had suddenly decided that Zionist leader Theodore Herzl was their hero and the national anthem Hatikva was their favorite song.
"The Arabs of Wadi Ara have become lovers of Zion," Liberman wrote mockingly. "The same residents of Umm el-Fahm who want to mark Yom Ha\’atzmaut as a catastrophe with black flags instead of Israeli flags, the same people who hoist pictures of [Hizbullah leader Hassan] Nasrallah and Hamas and Hizbullah flags are now complaining about becoming citizens of a Palestinian state as part of a peace agreement."
Liberman criticized Abbas for not wanting Israeli Arabs as Palestinian citizens after insisting on the release of Israeli Arab terrorists from Israeli prisons. He also slammed what he called "Leftist snobs and a number of hangers-on" for protesting the possibility of Israeli Arab citizenship being changed without having to move after not complaining about Gush Katif settlers being expelled from their homes.