AS ISRAELI politicians gear up for their last weekend canvassing ahead of Tuesday’s election, the only issue to have generated any kind of excitement so far has been the phenomenal rise in popularity of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home), which has established itself as the third most popular party.
Yisrael Beiteinu is led by 50-year-old Avigdor Lieberman, a heavily built former bouncer, who immigrated to Israel from Moldova in 1978, and still speaks Hebrew with a thick accent.
The party grabs the headlines almost every day. Repeating a simple anti-Arab message throughout the campaign, Yisrael Beiteinu rose steadily in the polls, and is almost certain to be a key member of Israel’s next governing coalition.
After serving as director general of the prime minister’s office when Benjamin Netanyahu was premier between 1996 and 1999, Mr Lieberman formed Yisrael Beiteinu, appealing to the one million Jews from the former Soviet Union who had settled in Israel.
Today, the party’s support is evenly split between Russian immigrants and veteran Israelis.
Polls show the party winning 17 to 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset parliament, trailing the right-wing Likud and centrist Kadima, but ahead of Labor.
The party’s campaign slogan “Without loyalty, there is no citizenship” hits a chord with Israelis, many of whom took offence at the pro-Palestinian sentiments expressed by Israeli Arabs during the recent war in Gaza.
Mr Lieberman advocates redrawing Israel’s borders to place many of Israel’s more than one million Arabs within the boundaries of a future Palestinian state. Those who remain would be required to sign an oath of loyalty or forfeit citizenship.
Controversy is Avigdor Lieberman’s middle name. In the past he said Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak can “go to hell”, advocated bombing Egypt’s Aswan dam and Palestinian commercial centres, and executing Arab Knesset members who met Hamas representatives.
Despite Mr Lieberman’s overt racism, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu said the Yisrael Beiteinu leader would have a senior portfolio in a Likud-led government.
Kadima leader Tzipi Livni said yesterday she did not object to having Yisrael Beiteinu in a coalition she headed, as long as it adhered to government policy.
Labor party leader Ehud Barak refused calls from party politicians to declare that Labor will not sit in the same coalition as Mr Lieberman.
Yisrael Beiteinu has firmly established itself as part of the Israeli political landscape.