Israel’s foreign minister refuses to ease harsh tones

TEL AVIV | Assuming the office of top diplomat has not yet tamed Avigdor Lieberman, judging from his continued blunt statements rejecting Israeli-Arab peace talks.

Israel’s new foreign minister declared recently that the U.S.-backed peace process was at a “dead end.” Then he told an Austrian newspaper that Syria was not a “genuine” partner for peace and that the land-for-peace formula that would return the Golan Heights for a treaty with Damascus “simply doesn’t work.”

Still, the most provocative figure in Israeli politics in a generation has shown flashes of realpolitik that suggest that he may be more amenable to a two-state solution than his rhetoric indicates.

In 2005, weeks after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had completed Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, he stunned hard-liners from his then party, the far-right National Union.

Ariyeh Eldad, a former member of the party, said Mr. Lieberman announced his intention to split the group.

“He said, ‘Your policy of not giving up an inch didn’t lead us anywhere. We can’t prevent any of the withdrawals from Sinai, or Gaza, so we have to go in the government, and work from within,’” Mr. Eldad said.

Since the move, Mr. Lieberman has led his Israel Is Our Home party from a small niche of three representatives to Israel’s third largest party, with 15 seats in parliament and control over several major ministries.

Mr. Lieberman is hard to categorize on Israel’s political spectrum. A resident of the isolated West Bank settlement of Nokdim, he has said he’d be willing to evacuate if Israel separated from the Palestinians. At the same time, he has advocated administering loyalty oaths to Israeli citizens that could be used to discriminate against Israeli Arabs.

Israeli analysts say that Mr. Lieberman has put a nationalist spin on the leftist argument about a need to separate Arab and Jewish states. The Moldovan-born immigrant’s worldview appears to have been shaped by a fear of ethnic minorities, a possible consequence of growing up in the multiethnic Soviet Union.

“You must understand, a minority is a very strong phenomenon in the last century,” he said in an interview 2½ years ago, citing conflicts throughout Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Ethnic minorities, explained Mr. Lieberman, were a major destabilizer in the 20th century. The problem is even more acute in Israel, he argued, because it lies at ground zero in what he termed, using the phrase of the late U.S. academic Samuel Huntington, the “clash of civilizations” between East and West.

“Countries that work the best are homogenic [sic],” he said.

After immigrating to Israel, serving in the army and enrolling at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Mr. Lieberman became active in the campus branch of the right-of-center Likud party, meeting many figures who would move up in the party together. The fact that he worked as a bouncer and often clashed with Arab students contributed to his bully image. He remained active in politics despite leaving the party, and in the late 1980s began working with a fast-rising young Likud star: Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu saw that here’s a guy who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty and knows how to get things done,” said Arik Elman, a political analyst and producer at a local Russian-language news channel.

Mr. Lieberman helped Mr. Netanyahu ascend to the leadership of the Likud, returned to the party as its first director general and then headed the prime minister’s office after the Likud took back power in 1996.

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