A group of immigrant academics has written to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, urging him to take a clear stand in opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state in Israel. The minister's office was non-committal, 
"We call on you to loudly and resolutely proclaim the establishment of a Palestinian state as an impossibility..."
although a spokesman said Lieberman would be discussing the letter's contents.
The letter, sent on Independence Day, reads: "We the undersigned, academics and others from the Russian-speaking community in Israel, urge you to do everything possible to prevent establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria." Such a state, the signatories claimed, would be "foreign to and hostile to the Jewish people... inside [Israel's] historical borders and adjacent to its largest cities."
On one hand, the letter excuses the American government for its pursuit of the creation of a Palestinian state, "because many in the American administration are unfamiliar with tides of anti-Semitic feeling and their manifestations and terrible damage. On the other hand, we who lived in the former Soviet Union are no strangers to the traditional hostility toward the Jewish people over the aeons of history and in our day."
The immigrant academics told Minister Lieberman that it would be "unconscionable for one of us, for the most senior-ranking emigre among us, to condone in any way the current American ambition to establish a Palestinian state...."
Seeking urgent action from the Foreign Ministry, the letter says, "We call on you to loudly and resolutely proclaim the establishment of a Palestinian state as an impossibility - by virtue of the need to protect the Jewish people within its tiny homeland."
An aide at the Foreign Minister's office called the retired Technion professor behind the initiative, Prof. Nina Fogel, at her home in Haifa to thank the signatories for their effort. The spokesman assured Prof. Fogel that Minister Lieberman would be discussing the contents of the letter with his staff "very promptly."
Prof. Fogel claimed that most immigrants from Russia and its former satellite states, constituting Mr. Lieberman's most loyal voter base, are strongly opposed to a Palestinian state.
The party Lieberman heads since its foundation in 1999, Israel Beiteinu, describes itself as "the liberal nationalist alternative". Its voter base was initially primarily made up of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and in the most recent elections, Israel Beiteinu became the third largest party in the political arena, surpassing the veteran Labor party.
Nonetheless, the Yisrael Beiteinu platform, and Lieberman himself, has not expressed principled opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state; rather, the official party line is that agreement to such a state must entail a complete separation of Jewish and Arab populations, including removing Jews from lands handed over to the Palestinian entity and removing Arabs from under Jewish national jurisdiction. Such an encompassing arrangement, Lieberman has made clear, could include his own family willingly uprooting itself from Nokdim, in the Judean Desert.