Israel’s foreign minister under pressure over comment about Israel's Arabs

After sparking outrage among Israel's Arab citizens, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni clarified Friday her remark that the solution for their national aspirations lay in the future Palestinian state, reported . Livni told Israel Radio that she had not been hinting at "transferring" or "moving" Israel's Arab citizens to the future Palestinian state, reported dpa. They would continue to live in Israel as equal citizens, she said, but as a minority in a state which was the home of the Jewish people. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would bring the "end of the conflict" and it would be the solution for the national aspirations of all Palestinians, including Arab Israelis. "The national solution for the Arab Israelis is in the Palestinian state when it is established," she told the radio, emphasizing she meant that "on the level of expression, not on the level of a physical move." Their "national expression is in another place," she said, adding that did not have "anything to do with a transfer or move." "I will fight for equal rights for every citizen in the state of Israel," she insisted. The 50-year-old leader of Israel's ruling Kadima party vehemently denied charges by critics that she had veered to the right in a bid to compete with former premier Benjamin Netanyahu of the hardline Likud party, her strongest rival in the race toward the February 10 Israeli elections. "I am at the same place my entire political life. I, unlike Netanyahu, don't determine my opinions according to the polls," she said, adding she had made similar remarks about Israel's Arabs in the past. Livni had told high-school pupils in Tel Aviv Thursday that "my solution for preserving Israel as a Jewish and a democratic state is to establish two nation states with certain concessions and with clear red lines." "So among others I could also come to Israel's Palestinian citizens, those whom we call Arab Israelis, and tell them: 'Your national solution is somewhere else.'" Arab-Israeli lawmaker Ahmed Tibi called her remarks "hurtful." "These (things) have been said before, but this time it is more severe because they are said by a candidate for the premiership," Tibi, of the United Arab List (UAL), which has four mandates in the 120-seat Knesset (Israeli parliament), told Israel Radio. Lawmaker Mohammed Barakeh of the three-seat Hadash party, called Livni's statement "the height of audacity." Israel's Arabs were not anyone's "guests," he told the BBC's Arabic Service. The idea of a "transfer," or of moving Israel's Arab citizens or the areas in which they live to a future Palestinian state or even to neighbouring Arab states, is highly controversial in Israel. The idea has been advocated in variations by extreme-right and hardline politicians, including Avigdor Lieberman of the ultra- nationalist Israel Our Home party and assassinated Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi of the ultra-right Moledet party. Netanyahu has in recent weeks obtained a lead over Livni in opinion polls, and critics have said that she has begun to express markedly hardline positions, including against the Gaza truce, in a bid to win over centre-right voters. Israel's Arab citizens make up 20 per cent of the country's population of 7.3 million. They enjoy equal voting rights and are represented in the Israeli parliament, but often complain of discrimination when applying to jobs, seeking to rent apartments or enrolling their children into schools in predominantly Jewish areas. The relationship between the country's Jewish majority and Arab minority is sensitive and reached a low point in October 2000, when Israeli police shot dead 13 Arab-Israeli youths during weeks of widespread unrest in northern Israel in solidarity with the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza.