Avigdor Lieberman

Avigdor Lieberman (1958-) is an Israeli politician, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, and current Foreign Minister of Israel in the coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu. In the February 2009 Knesset elections, his far-right party held the balance of power in the coalition government, and he chose Netanyahu and Likud over Tzipi Livni and Kadima as Prime Minister.

Lieberman rejects sharing Jerusalem with a Palestinian state and a withdrawal from West Bank settlements like Nokdim, where he has lived since 1988 with Ella, his wife of 28 years.

Yisrael Beiteinu is officially secular, and has offended some religious Israelis by supporting civil marriage.

Israeli citizenship
Among his most controversial positions is expecting a Zionist loyalty oath from all Israelis, Jewish or not, who expect to remain citizens. This met with mixed reaction among U.S. Zionist organizations, when he said “Arabs have all their rights in Israel, but they have no right to Eretz Yisrael,” at the Herzliya Conference, an annual summit on Israeli state and security.

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, said he found Lieberman's proposal “legitimate,” while Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said he saw Liberman's comments directed at Arab Israeli Knesset  who traveled to enemy states and Israeli Arabs who expressed solidarity with Hamas during the 2009 Gaza operation. Foxman said “There were a lot of people who said, 'Hey, that's disloyal,' That's what he's talking about. He's not saying expel them. He's not saying punish them.” Foxman also said he would speak out against proposals that violated the tenets of Israeli democracy, pointing out that in 2006, the ADL announced it was “disturbed” by Lieberman's call for the execution of Arab legislators who met with Hamas leaders. He questions the loyalties of Israel's Arab citizens and his anti-Arab rhetoric has won a large following beyond his Russian-speaking base.

Founds own party
Frustrated with coalition politics, he founded Yisrael Beiteinu (Our Home is Israel) in 1999, calling for a strong presidency and a peace deal with the Palestinians under which Israel would swap land on which many of its 1.5 million Arab citizens live for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Buoyed by support among the massive influx of Russian speakers in the 1990s, he served in three governments from 2001 to 2008, quitting Ehud Olmert's coalition in 2008 over the idea of  U.S.-sponsored talks with the Palestinians.

As administrative head of Likud from 1993, he ran the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from 1996 to 1997.

Early life
Born Evet Lieberman in the Soviet city of Kishinev, now Chisinau, capital of Moldova, on June 5, 1958, Lieberman studied at the local agricultural institute. His father Lev was a Red Army veteran who was taken prisoner by the Germans and later spent 7 years in a Siberian Gulag labour camp under Stalin.

He and his parents emigrated to Israel in 1978, some of the first significant group of Soviet emigres. On arrival, he changed his name to Avigdor, and learned Hebrew in addition to his native Russian; he also speaks English and Romanian.

He served as an army corporal, took a social science degree and held various jobs, including as an airport baggage handler and a much-cited spell as a nightclub bouncer. While a student in Jerusalem, he began his career as an activist in the right-wing Likud party of then Prime Minister Menachem Begin.