Environment Minister Quits over Liberman Appointment to Defense

/ May 30, 2016

An Israeli minister announced his resignation on Friday, May 27, in response to the ultra-right Yisrael Beytenu party’s joining the government coalition and the appointment of right-wing Avigdor Liberman as defense minister. Calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Liberman as defense minister and expanding his coalition to include the Israel Beytenu party “a step that he couldn’t live with,” Minister of Environmental Protection and a founding member of the Kulanu party, Avi Gabai, resigned from his position in the government. However, because Gabai is not a member of the Israeli Knesset, his decision will not affect the size of the new right-wing coalition.

Former Minister of Environmental Protection Avi Gabai

Former Minister of Environmental Protection Avi Gabai (Photo: GPO)

Gabai’s decision comes just one week after the resignation of former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and his decision to remove himself entirely from the political scene in Israel. Liberman, who formerly served as foreign minister and resides in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, has advocated policies including the overthrow of the Palestinian Authority; the deportation of Palestinian citizens of Israel into the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT); promoting the transfer of towns in Israel that are heavily populated by Palestinians to a future Palestinian state in exchange for Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Liberman has also threatened to assassinate Hamas leaders.

The new, racist defense minister, Liberman, is currently leading a proposal to legalize the death penalty for “terrorists” tried in military courts, essentially designing a law that would impose capital punishment exclusively on Palestinian residents of the OPT, who are those prosecuted in military courts, while excluding Israelis in general and Israeli settlers in particular, who are prosecuted for crimes in civil courts. In March, after a video was released of an Israeli soldier shooting a wounded Palestinian execution-style in the head, Liberman publicly defended the soldier even as Ya’alon and the Israeli military condemned the soldier’s actions, as he accused the right-wing Likud party of being “stand-ins” for B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group fighting human rights abuses carried out by Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

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