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.
