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Lieberman Plan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Lieberman Plan, proposed May, 2004, also known in Israel as the "Populated-Land Exchange Plan", suggests an exchange of populated territories, populated by Arabs and Jews respectively, between Israel and Palestinian Authority[1]. This is sometimes confused with population exchange or population transfer, which imply the forcible removal of populations from their homes.[citation needed] This is not advocated under the Lieberman Plan which merely suggests drawing new borders between Palestinian and Zionist communities. The plan is named after Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the Israeli political party Yisrael Beytenu.
Although Israel’s Arab population has greatly increased since the state’s founding the Arab population in Israel’s major cities has not increased at all and this is due to migration from the cities to the border areas. All Arab regions are concentrated in regions which were presumed to be part of the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan. The Arabs of Israel were only given citizenship in 1951 under “Chok haEzrachut beKoach” or the compulsory citizenship law which forced citizenship on Arabs living under Israeli military control. Since 1967 areas in the West Bank of equal size to the Arab regions of Israel have been populated by half a million Israeli Jews.
The Lieberman Plan suggests a territorial exchange whereby Israel would acquire most Jewish regions in the West Bank at the same time as it would cede Arab regions of Israel to the Palestinian Authority. There are three major Arab regions in Israel, all contigious with the West Bank; (1) the southern and central Galilee, (2) the central region known as "the Triangle" and (3) the Bedouin region in the northern part of the Negev desert. Giving up these three regions would reduce the number of Israeli Arab citizens by 90%. Only those Arabs living in isolated villages and as minorities in Jewish cities would remain. The ethnically Druze community which is Zionist would also remain part of Israel. All remaining citizens whether Jews or Arabs would have to pledge an oath of allegiance to the state in order to keep their Israeli citizenship.
Arab critics claim that the Lieberman plan amounts to the institution of apartheid and as such is racist while Jewish critics sympathetic to the idea of exchanging populated territories insist that it would be preferable to do this as part of a comprehensive peace agreement.