Word: lieberman
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...With Kadima and Likud both far short of a majority in the Knesset, Yisrael Beitenu's controversial leader, Avigdor Lieberman, has emerged as a key power broker. Speaking to his party supporters at midnight as votes were being tallied, Lieberman indicated that his natural inclination is to side with Netanyahu. "We want a right-wing government," he said flatly. Lieberman also took a swing at the outgoing Kadima-led government for entering into Egyptian-brokered cease-fire talks with Gaza's Islamic militants, Hamas. "We will not have direct or indirect negotiations with Hamas nor a cease-fire," he said...
...Lieberman's surge in the polls to edge the once-dominant Labor Party out of third place reveals a deep insecurity on the part of many Israelis, who feel surrounded by implacable enemies in the form of Hamas in Gaza and Hizballah in Lebanon, both backed by a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. This fear was accentuated by Israel's 22-day offensive in Gaza, which inflicted widespread casualties among Palestinian civilians but failed to defeat Hamas or even stop the group from firing rockets into southern Israel. Nor did the assault manage to free a kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad...
...Yisrael Beitenu has risen swiftly since Lieberman created it in 1999 as a breakaway from the right-wing Likud Party, which he thought was making too many concessions to Palestinians. In the 2003 elections, the party took seven seats, with backing mainly in Israel's large Russian-speaking immigrant community. By the 2006 elections, he had broadened its base, winning 11 seats. Now, according to polls, he could gather up to 20 seats, bumping Labor, one of Israel's classic founding parties, into fourth place. Netanyahu's Likud Party is expected to win 25 to 27 seats, and Livni...
...Among Israel's Arabs, Lieberman's rise is viewed with alarm. As one Arab schoolteacher wrote in an Israeli newspaper: "[Lieberman] hates us and incites against us, and we can see that he is doing very well: The more he incites against us, the stronger he becomes." But some Arab intellectuals see Lieberman's ascendancy as a symptom of a struggle between those Israelis who still believe in peace with the Palestinians, and those who think it is impossible to even try, and who advocate living in a constant state of military readiness against the Arab enemy. "Lieberman...
...distant fourth place with only 12 Knesset seats, according to the exit polls. And while Livni's strength was a function of Labor voters moving to the right to back Kadima, Netanyahu lost support not to the center, but to the far-right nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party of Avigdor Lieberman, whose third-place finish with 16 seats, according to exit polls, made it the story of the election. The surge in support for his hostile views to Israeli Arabs and for even more hawkish policies towards the Palestinians has made Lieberman the kingmaker, and conventional wisdom suggests that...