Lieberman Plan - The Plan

The Plan

The Lieberman Plan suggests a territorial exchange whereby Israel would annex almost all Israeli settlements in the West Bank which are situated in major settlement blocs close to the border, and withdraw from the remaining few deep inside the Palestinian territories. At the same time, it would transfer Arab-Israeli areas to the Palestinian state. While there are three major Arab regions in Israel, all contiguous with the West Bank (southern and central Galilee, the central region known as "the Triangle", and the Bedouin region in the northern part of the Negev desert), the Lieberman Plan only advocates ceding the Triangle. All Arab residents of the Triangle would lose their Israeli citizenship. The Druze community, whose leaders are mainly pro-Israel, would remain part of Israel. All remaining citizens, whether Jews or Arabs would have to pledge an oath of allegiance to the state in order to keep their Israeli citizenship.

The plan would reduce both the Arab population of Israel and the Jewish population of the West Bank, creating more ethnically homogeneous states without anyone moving. Various estimates as to the number of Arab-Israeli’s affected by the plan vary from a high of 90% of current Arab Israelis in Lieberman’s own estimate to as little as 11.8% of Arab citizens being affected (2.3% of Israel’s population overall) according to a study by the Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies.