MK Avigdor Lieberman, the Chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the head of the Yisrael Beytenu faction, said Saturday night that Israeli Arabs are attempting to create deterrence against Israel through violence.
In a reference to Friday's rioting in the Wadi Ara region in north central Israel on Friday, he wrote on his Facebook page: “The law enforcement authorities must treat disturbances like yesterday's with the fullest severity and without compromises.”
The Wadi Ara disturbance followed the demolition of a house in Bartaa. Local Arabs hurled rocks at police, waved PLO flags and called out nationalistic slogans against Israel.
"We cannot accept a situation in which every attempt to deal with illegal construction in the Arab sector turns into a violent riot and a nationalistic event,” he added, “just as no one would allow a violent disturbance by residents of Tel Aviv because of a demolition of an illegal porch on Dizengoff Street.”
"This violence is meant to deter and to create two types of populations in this country, de facto,” Lieberman explained – “one that the law applies to, and one that the law, including the Planning and Construction Law, does not apply to and where it is not enforced. This attempt at deterrence is also the reason for the hooliganism and extreme incitement by the Arab MKs this week, in the Knesset, during the vote on the law for Regulating Bedouin Settlement in the Negev...”
People who demand that the law be followed to a letter regarding illegal construction in Judea and Samaria, he summed up, must demand the same kind of treatment by the authorities when Israel's Arabs are the culprits.