Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) on Sunday told the Munich Security Conference the conflict between Israel and the Arabs does involve a two-state solution, but with a twist: the Jewish State must be purely Jewish, exporting all its Arabs to the new, Palestinian State.
“I believe that what is necessary for us is to keep the Jewish state,” he told the conference, repeating the proposal that brought on him the wrath of Israel’s left and, most important, Israel’s Arabs: let Arab towns in Israel which are close enough to the 1949 armistice green line become part of the future Palestinian state, while Israeli towns on the other side of the same green line become part of Israel.
“My biggest problem is that today on the table we have a proposal (which) will establish a very homogenized Palestinian state without even one Jew, while we will become a binational state with more than 20% of the population being Palestinians,” he said.
“I think the basic principle of a solution must include an exchange of land and population,” Liberman argued. “It does not make sense to create one homogenized Palestinian state alongside a binational state of Israel.”
Liberman began his remarks Sunday saying there were three challenges in the region: “Iran, Iran and Iran.” He accused the Iranians of working to “undermine stability in every country in Middle East … their main destination at the end of the day is Saudi Arabia.”
Each February, over the past five decades, the Munich Security Conference (MSC) has been bringing together more than 450 senior decision-makers from around the world, including heads-of-state, ministers, leading personalities of international and non-governmental organizations, as well as high ranking representatives of industry, media, academia, and civil society, to engage in an intensive debate on current and future security challenges. Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and a number of US senators and House members visited the MSC this weekend.
