MIDDLE EAST: The man Ariel Sharon wants to fire to ensure cabinet approval for his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip is certainly making it easy for him writes David Horowitz in Jerusalem.
Avigdor Lieberman is Israel's minister of infrastructure and the head of the National Union, the most hawkish party in Prime Minister Sharon's coalition. And over the past few days, Mr Lieberman has been reminding Israelis why he has a reputation as one of the country's most extreme politicians. He is calling for most of Israel's Arab citizens to be dispatched beyond its borders, and has singled out as prime candidates the Arab footballers who recently won the state soccer cup - in what was generally welcomed as a victory for co-existence.
During a stormy cabinet meeting on Sunday, Mr Sharon condemned Mr Lieberman's Arab-exile proposal, saying that Israel regarded its million-plus Arab citizens as an integral part of the state. And with the prime minister just one vote short of winning cabinet support for his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip by the end of next year, and vowing to dismiss recalcitrant ministers if necessary to achieve a majority, Mr Lieberman appears to be a prime candidate for the chop.
A 1970s immigrant from the former Soviet Union, he is a particularly tempting choice because his National Union party is only a minor, four-member faction in the multi-party coalition and can be jettisoned without major political damage.
Furthermore, Mr Lieberman, who lives at the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, will oppose every effort by Mr Sharon to evacuate settlements, unless the evacuation is part of the kind of population exchange he advocates, with settlers from the territories relocating inside sovereign Israel as Israeli Arabs head in the opposite direction. Best of all, Mr Lieberman is a close ally of finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom the prime minister would love to fire but may not dare to, for fear of sparking rebellion in his Likud party.
Mr Lieberman sparked outrage late last week when he suggested that Bnai Sakhnin, which had just become the first Israeli Arab soccer team to win the state cup, might be renamed "Hapoel Nablus", after a major West Bank city, indicating that they ought to play their football in the West Bank.
Yesterday Mr Lieberman was talking tough again, this time lambasting justice minister Yosef Lapid, one of the most outspoken critics of his vision. Mr Lapid, he declared "has turned into a spokesman for al-Jazeera [the Arab cable TV network]. The man goes on every TV station in the world and declares that we are inhuman."
Come what may, Mr Sharon repeated yesterday that he would get his Gaza separation plan passed next Sunday.