Yisrael Beiteinu party Chairman and Minister of Stategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman announced Sunday his conditions for supporting a final-status agreement at Annapolis.

Lieberman said his party would support a permanent agreement between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas only if it included the transfer of several Israeli-Arab villages to PA sovereignty, along with their residents. He also said that NATO must deploy in PA areas of a future state to ensure Israel’s security.

The principles are outlined in a document billed as the party’s “Red Lines.” The document makes official Yisrael Beiteinu’s willingness to divide Jerusalem along demographic lines, except for the areas surrounding the Old City. The “Holy Basin,” a term used to describe the heart of Jerusalem in recent talks of power-sharing agreements and the like is defined by Yisrael Beiteinu as stretching from Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives to Silwan in the south and Sheikh Jarrah in the north.

Another red line is a PA-controlled route connecting Judea and Gaza – something Olmert has already agreed to in principle.

Yisrael Beiteinu’s least-highlighted, though most relevant, demand is that the US-backed Road Map’s requirement for a cessation of PA terrorism be implemented before any permanent agreement is even discussed. "Any attempt to force a diplomatic arrangement before a substantial drop in terrorist activities, particularly the Kassam rocket fire, and in a reality in which there is an unemployment rate of more than 80 percent on the Palestinian side – is destined to fail,” the document reads.

In an interview on Army Radio Sunday, Lieberman said that his party would leave the government if it became apparent that Olmert was even engaging in negotiations on additional key issues such as Jerusalem’s holy sites and even a symbolic return of Arabs who fled in 1948.

Lieberman said his exchange-of-territories plan would bring Israel to an 80 percent Jewish majority.

Responses to Yisrael Beiteinu Document
MK Aryeh Eldad (NU/NRP) said Lieberman “must take the public for fools,” saying that it is obvious to all that core issues are even now being discussed in preparation for Annapolis. “His [Cabinet] seat is simply more precious to him than his principles,” Eldad said, “and it is once again clear that his word does not mean a thing.”

Israeli-Arab MK Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash) said that Lieberman’s Red Lines document "Ends the negotiations before they even begin."

Barakeh also attacked Lieberman as a person. "This man is a warmonger and a racist,” he said. “The Arab residents of Israel will never be looked at as temporary dwellers in their own homeland.”

MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) dealt with the actual logistics of Lieberman’s proposed final-status deal. “We object to a Jerusalem-for-Um el-Fahm deal,” Zahalka said, referring to a major Israeli-Arab village in the Galilee that Lieberman wants to turn over to the PA.

Weiss: Um el-Fahm is Holy Land
Daniella Weiss, the head of the Kedumim regional council, spoke out last week against an article written by Rabbi Yisrael Rosenne that echoed much of what Yisrael Beiteinu is proposing. In his column in the “Shabbat B’Shabbato” pamphlet, Rabbi Rosenne said that he would be willing to give the Palestinian Authority control over the heavily Arab “Triangle” area including Um el-Fahm in exchange for Jewish areas in Judea and Samaria. Weiss said the rabbi’s call was “rooted in serious confusion.”  Um el-Fahm is holy land, she said, “that is, temporarily, inhabited by non-Jews.”

“The fact that there is a large non-Jewish population in the land of Israel does not change the fact of Jewish sovereignty,” Weiss said, comparing the situation to that of the patriarch Avraham, who received the land when several non-Jewish tribes lived there. “If anyone wants to give away parts of the land,” she said, “that person must ask permission not only from today’s Jews, but also from future generations, because the land belongs to them as well.”

Maayana Miskin contributed to this report