The demand by Yisrael Beitenu Chairman and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman to include Israel’s Arab citizens in a new bill to institute universal military service is no more than a cheap trick. The threatening demand is designed to keep Liberman in the public eye as a forceful politician even now, when he is deep in the throes of a legal battle, and to signal his voters that he is still relevant.

It therefore came as no surprise that Liberman suddenly popped up on May 25 just as the Perry Committee was about to publish its recommendations to reform the military and national service draft. Liberman’s representative on the committee, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, threatened that if the new legislation were to apply only to the ultra-Orthodox, thus continuing to exempt the Arabs, Yisrael Beitenu would vote against the proposed bill.

Ultimately, the committee’s deliberations became deadlocked early on May 27, but over a different detail: disagreement over criminal sanctions to be automatically imposed on ultra-Orthodox men who fail to comply with the new draft quotas.

This is not the first time that Liberman has manipulated Israel’s Arabs for political ends. He built his entire 2009 election strategy on the back of the Arabs when he adopted a slogan making Israeli citizenship conditional on allegiance to the state. The campaign was masterminded by his American consultant, Arthur Finkelstein. The noted campaign strategist recommended that Liberman go full-force with a catchy message to attract Israeli-born voters, in addition to his traditional constituency of Russian immigrants, at a time of growing radicalization of the Arab street. Finkelstein was right. The message was a perfect fit for Liberman. Yisrael Beitenu raked in 15 seats in the 120-member Knesset, and Liberman was awarded the foreign minister’s job and became the strongman in that term's administration.