Yisrael Beitenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman.

Party Chairman: Avigdor Lieberman

Established: 1999

Current Knesset seats: 15

Official Website: www.beytenu.org

Official Knesset Pofile: Yisrael Beitenu

Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is our home"), now the Knesset's third largest party, is a far-right nationalist party led by former Deputy Prime Minister and Minster of Strategic Threats Avigdor Lieberman, who has on numerous occasions in the past advocated the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The party is primarily driven by a desire to create an exclusively Jewish state in as much of Israel and the lands it occupied in the 1967 war as possible, including large parts of the Palestinian West Bank and the entire Syrian Golan Heights.

Formerly united with parties that would have addressed this concern by the forced transfer of Palestinians citizens outside of Israel's borders, Yisrael Beiteinu now supports an exchange of territory, whereby predominantly Palestinian areas of Israel would fall under Palestinian jurisdiction, while large Israeli settlements in the West Bank would fall under Israeli sovereignty. If applied, this plan would strip roughly one-third of Israel's Palestinian citizens of their citizenship.

Yisrael Beitenu also proposes a new citizenship law under which a "loyalty test" would be applied to those Palestinian citizens who desired to remain in Israel. Those committed to making Israel a state of all its citizens, including the Palestinian minority, would be stripped of voting rights.

Finally, the party supports economic development specifically geared to new immigrants. This would encourage Jewish immigration in an effort to offset the higher birthrate among Palestinian citizens of the state and maintain Jewish demographic predominance.

Key Party Members


Avigdor Lieberman. Official Knesset Profile. A former Deputy Prime Minister and Minster of Strategic Threats before resigning from the cabinet in January 2007, he is currently a member of the Knesset. Lieberman, an immigrant from Moldova, said in a 2004 interview that 90 per cent of Israel's 1.2 million Arabs would "have to find a new Arab entity" in which to live beyond Israel's borders. Read more.

According to Israel's former ambassador to France, in 2009 French President Nicholas Sarkozy met with Netanyahu and expressed shock that he had appointed Lieberman foreign minister. The ambassador recalled: "At that meeting Sarkozy spoke very undiplomatically and said very harsh things words about Lieberman to Netanyahu... He was tough and defiant, and asked Netanyahu in front of everyone: 'How can you appoint a man with those opinions to this job, and to your government? It's unacceptable that I, Nicolas Sarkozy, am forced to say that, but I won't receive him and I won't meet with him.'"


Uzi Landau. Official Knesset Profile. A veteran Likud member and recent addition to Yisrael Beitenu, he is vehemently opposed to the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from occupied territory and Palestinian statehood. Known for his hawkish views towards Israel's perceived enemies, Landau in 2002 said that Israel should do to the Palestinians "what the Iraqis did to the Kurds." Read more.

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