Joint Arab list head Ayman Odeh
Joint Arab list head Ayman OdehDanielle Shitrit/Flash 90

MK Ayman Odeh, head of the Arab Joint List, refused Tuesday to speak out against the ubiquitous phenomenon of roadside terror in which Arab assailants hurl rocks at Jewish motorists.

"There is no doubt that the occupied nation has a right to fight the occupation within the 1967 borders. I do not place red lines before the Arab nation," Odeh told Army Radio. "It is the one that will choose how to fight against the terror."

He did say, however, that he does not support the use of military weapons in the struggle, and prefers what he termed a "popular struggle."

When asked specifically about rock attacks, he noted that he supported the "first Intifada," which was typified by rock attacks that have been proven lethal on many tragic occasions.

"I will always blame the Israeli occupation, which is the one that is to blame," he insisted. "I cannot tell the Palestinian people how to struggle, whether to send the rock from this place to another."

Odeh accused Israel of disrupting the status quo by preventing Muslims from entering the Temple Mount for six hours every day. The interviewer noted that this was done because Muslims have been harassing Jews who ascended the Mount, but Odeh said that this behavior was a reaction to previous provocations by the government.

In response, the chairman of Yisrael Beytenu, MK Avigdor Liberman, told Army Radio that "Ayman Odeh and his list spit at the Israeli Knesset, and the state of Israel; they spit in the face of the Jews."

"There is no doubt," he said, "that these are terrorists who sit in the Israeli Knesset, they are the political arm of the terror, and we do not deal with them."

Liberman accused Netanyahu of being a "wimp" and called for toppling Hamas's rule in Gaza and setting up an alternative government there.