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Avigdor the Foreigner

This is a guest post by Michael Weiss

His first week on the job and the new Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is all smiles, reaffirming his commitment to a lack of commitment to a two-state solution.”Those who think that through concessions they will gain respect and peace are wrong,” Lieberman told the New York Times. “It is the other way around; it will lead to more wars.”

One of the strangely unremarked aspects of Lieberman’s ascendancy is that he has a vested interest in ensuring settlements in the West Bank aren’t dismantled anytime soon. He lives in one. But that raises an interesting question: Assuming that by some miracle of geopolitics a Palestinian state did emerge on Netanyahu’s watch, would that make the foreign minister for Israel from… another country? How would that go down amongst a constituency that wants Israelis to swear upon loyalty oaths?