Israel's Lieberman Still Holds Keys to Future Government

Avigdor Lieberman. (AFP)
Avigdor Lieberman. (AFP)
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Israel's Lieberman Still Holds Keys to Future Government

Avigdor Lieberman. (AFP)
Avigdor Lieberman. (AFP)

Israel finds itself in a familiar place after a tumultuous election campaign — with maverick politician Avigdor Lieberman still seemingly in control of the country’s fate.

The run-up to Israel's third election in less than a year saw criminal charges filed against the prime minister, a divisive American Middle East plan unveiled and various party mergers and machinations. Yet once again, opinion polls suggest that neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his chief challenger Benny Gantz will be able to form a coalition without Lieberman.

Lieberman remains cagey about his intentions, raising the possibility his brinkmanship could end up forcing yet another election, reported The Associated Press.

Lieberman’s nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party bolted from Netanyahu's right-wing camp last year to spark the unprecedented stalemate in Israeli politics. Though Lieberman has all but ruled out sitting in a government led by his one-time mentor Netanyahu, saying his “era is over,” he has also driven a hard bargain with Gantz and has taken out campaign ads against the former military chief.

Lieberman insists a future coalition cannot include Arab-led parties, whose lawmakers he considers terrorist sympathizers because several have sided with Israel's adversaries and refused to condemn attackers.

He has also ruled out governing jointly with ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties that he says have long wielded disproportionate power that has harmed Israel’s secular majority and, in particular, his base of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Lieberman himself immigrated to Israel in the 1970s from the former Soviet republic of Moldova.

His preferred solution after the last election was to play matchmaker between Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party and Netanyahu’s Likud and coax them into a unity government.

But that option appears off the table even if the numbers don't seem to add up to any other realistic alternative. Gantz refuses to partner with the indicted Netanyahu and Likud appears unwilling to part ways with its longtime leader, even as he goes on trial next month.

Still, Lieberman, who declined interview requests, insists this vote will produce a breakthrough and he will be the one to dictate how it all plays out.

“The reality is different. There won’t be another election. This time we will pick a side,” said Eli Avidar, a lawmaker from Lieberman's party who often serves as his voice to foreign audiences.

Avidar, a former diplomat, said that with Netanyahu heading to trial on March 17, other options have emerged across Israel’s fractured political landscape. For starters, Lieberman has indicated a newfound openness to sitting in government with left-wing parties he once shunned and has hinted that other nationalists could follow suit to give Gantz the edge he needs.

Either way, Avidar said that with Iran believed to be pursuing nuclear weapons and a huge deficit to overcome, there was simply too much at stake to risk dragging on the government paralysis any longer.

Israel's attorney general charged Netanyahu in November on three counts of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The trial begins two weeks after the election, and just as the new parliament is sworn in and coalition negotiations will be getting under way.

Opinion polls show Likud and Blue and White in a tight race. Unless Likud somehow defies the polls and emerges as the most dominant party, Netanyahu's precarious legal position will make it difficult for him to form a new coalition.

“It’s not a game,” Avidar said. “The minute Netanyahu shows up to court people will finally realize that it’s over for him and it’s time to move on,” he added, according to the AP.

Thorn in Netanyahu’s side

If this indeed is the end of the road for Netanyahu, it would carry no small degree of irony that Lieberman was the one to finally push him out.

Lieberman started out as a top Netanyahu aide in the 1990s and as Netanyahu’s chief of staff during his first term in office later that decade. He then embarked on a political career of his own as a nationalist hard-liner and champion of fellow former Soviet Union immigrants.

Over the next two decades, the pair enjoyed a roller-coaster relationship in which Lieberman held a series of senior cabinet posts under Netanyahu and often served as a staunch partner and defender, while occasionally emerging as a rival, critic and thorn in Netanyahu’s side.

Lieberman resigned as defense minister in 2018 because Netanyahu kept blocking his plans to strike hard against Gaza armed factions. He passed up the chance to return to the post following last April’s election when he refused to join Netanyahu’s emerging coalition and forced the do-over vote. He stuck to his guns after the September vote as well and helped prevent Netanyahu from securing the parliamentary immunity he sought to avoid an embarrassing trial.

If, as polls forecast, Netanyahu fails to secure a 61-seat majority in Israel's parliament, Israel’s longest-ever leader may be out of cards to play.

With another deadlock looming, Lieberman leaves observers pondering what he ultimately hopes to achieve.

Israeli commentator Nahum Barnea said he believes Lieberman isn't driven by political ambition at this stage, noting he has already held a number of senior cabinet posts. "There’s nothing out there that truly charms him,” he said, according to the AP. “I think he mostly wants to prove that Israel can have a government without Netanyahu.”

The 61-year-old Lieberman derives most of his power from a devout following of both immigrants and native-born Israelis drawn to his straight-talking persona and his dual nationalist-secular credo. Perhaps more than any other Israeli political leader, he exercises complete control over his party. That gives him great leverage in coalition negotiations.

But Barnea says Lieberman may have overplayed his hand by “creating too many enemies” in ruling out both the Arab-led and ultra-Orthodox parties. Even so, polls still have his party as a tipping point that could block Netanyahu from staying in power.

“Lieberman started out as the kingmaker, but he turned into the king-slayer,” Barnea said.



What to Expect, and What Not to, at the UN Meeting on an Israel-Palestinian Two-state Solution

27 July 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza City: Palestinians carry sacks of flour from a humanitarian aid convoy, as they make their way along al-Rashid street. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
27 July 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza City: Palestinians carry sacks of flour from a humanitarian aid convoy, as they make their way along al-Rashid street. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
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What to Expect, and What Not to, at the UN Meeting on an Israel-Palestinian Two-state Solution

27 July 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza City: Palestinians carry sacks of flour from a humanitarian aid convoy, as they make their way along al-Rashid street. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
27 July 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza City: Palestinians carry sacks of flour from a humanitarian aid convoy, as they make their way along al-Rashid street. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

The UN General Assembly is bringing high-level officials together this week to promote a two-state solution to the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict that would place their peoples side by side, living in peace in independent nations.

Israel and its close ally the United States are boycotting the two-day meeting, which starts Monday and will be co-chaired by the foreign ministers of France and Saudi Arabia. Israel’s right-wing government opposes a two-state solution, and the United States has called the meeting “counterproductive” to its efforts to end the war in Gaza. France and Saudi Arabia want the meeting to put a spotlight on the two-state solution, which they view as the only viable road map to peace, and to start addressing the steps to get there.

The meeting was postponed from late June and downgraded from a four-day meeting of world leaders amid surging tensions in the Middle East, including Israel's 12-day war against Iran and the war in Gaza.

“It was absolutely necessary to restart a political process, the two-state solution process, that is today threatened, more threatened than it has ever been," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Sunday on CBS News' “Face the Nation."

Here's what's useful to know about the upcoming gathering.

Why a two-state solution? The idea of dividing the Holy Land goes back decades.

When the British mandate over Palestine ended, the UN partition plan in 1947 envisioned dividing the territory into Jewish and Arab states. Israel accepted the plan, but upon Israel's declaration of independence the following year, its Arab neighbors declared war and the plan was never implemented. Under a 1949 armistice, Jordan held control over the West Bank and east Jerusalem and Egypt over Gaza.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those lands for a future independent state alongside Israel, and this idea of a two-state solution based on Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries has been the basis of peace talks dating back to the 1990s.

The two-state solution has wide international support. The logic behind it is that the population of Israel — along with east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — is divided equally between Jews and Palestinians.

The establishment of an independent Palestine would leave Israel as a democratic country with a solid Jewish majority and grant the Palestinians their dream of self-determination.

Why hold a conference now? France and Saudi Arabia have said they want to put a spotlight on the two-state solution as the only viable path to peace in the Middle East — and they want to see a road map with specific steps, first ending the war in Gaza.

The co-chairs said in a document sent to UN members in May that the primary goal of the meeting is to identify actions by “all relevant actors” to implement the two-state solution — and “to urgently mobilize the necessary efforts and resources to achieve this aim, through concrete and time-bound commitments.”

Saudi diplomat Manal Radwan, who led the country’s delegation to the preparatory conference, said the meeting must “chart a course for action, not reflection.” It must be “anchored in a credible and irreversible political plan that addresses the root cause of the conflict and offers a real path to peace, dignity and mutual security,” she said.

French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed for a broader movement toward a two-state solution in parallel with a recognition of Israel’s right to defend itself. He announced late Thursday that France will recognize the state of Palestine officially at the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly in late September.

About 145 countries have recognized the state of Palestine. But Macron’s announcement, ahead of Monday’s meeting and amid increasing global anger over desperately hungry people in Gaza starting to die from starvation, makes France the most important Western power to do so.

What is Israel’s view? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the two-state solution on both nationalistic and security grounds.

Netanyahu’s religious and nationalist base views the West Bank as the biblical and historical homeland of the Jewish people, while Israeli Jews overwhelmingly consider Jerusalem their eternal capital. The city’s eastern side is home to Judaism’s holiest site, along with major Christian and Muslim holy places.

Hard-line Israelis like Netanyahu believe the Palestinians don’t want peace, citing the second Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s, and more recently the Hamas takeover of Gaza two years after Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005. The Hamas takeover led to five wars, including the current and ongoing 21-month conflict.

At the same time, Israel also opposes a one-state solution in which Jews could lose their majority. Netanyahu's preference seems to be the status quo, where Israel maintains overall control and Israelis have fuller rights than Palestinians, Israel deepens its control by expanding settlements, and the Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy in pockets of the West Bank.

Netanyahu condemned Macron’s announcement of Palestinian recognition, saying it “rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became."

What is the Palestinian view? The Palestinians, who label the current arrangement “apartheid,” accuse Israel of undermining repeated peace initiatives by deepening settlement construction in the West Bank and threatening annexation. That would harm the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state and their prospects for independence.

Ahmed Majdalani, a member of the PLO Executive Committee and close associate of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the meeting will serve as preparation for a presidential summit expected in September. It will take place either in France or at the UN on the sidelines of the high-level meeting, UN diplomats said.

Majdalani said the Palestinians have several goals, first a “serious international political process leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

The Palestinians also want additional international recognition of their state by major countries including Britain. But expect that to happen in September, not at Monday’s meeting, Majdalani said. And he said they want economic and financial support for the Palestinian Authority and international support for the reconstruction and recovery of the Gaza Strip.

What will happen — and won't happen — at the meeting? All 193 UN member nations have been invited to attend the meeting and a French diplomat said about 40 ministers are expected. The United States and Israel are the only countries who are boycotting.

The co-chairs have circulated an outcome document which could be adopted, and there could be some announcements of intentions to recognize a Palestinian state. But with Israel and the United States boycotting, there is no prospect of a breakthrough and the resumption of long-stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on an end to their conflict.

Secretary-General António Guterres urged participants after the meeting was announced “to keep the two-state solution alive.” And he said the international community must not only support a solution where independent states of Palestine and Israel live side-by-side in peace but “materialize the conditions to make it happen.”