Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday presented the United Nations with his draft for a population and territory swap, as part of an eventual peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Under Lieberman's controversial scheme, part of Israel's Arab population would be moved to a newly created Palestinians state, in return for evacuation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
"A final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians has to be based on a program of exchange of territory and populations," Lieberman told the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The foreign minister stressed that his proposals did not represent a scheme for "populations transfer", a phrase that evokes historical proposals by Israel's extreme right to evict Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza altogether.
"We are not talking about population transfer but about defining borders so as best to reflect the demographic reality," said. But the ideas are nevertheless likely to provoke an angry reponse, especially from Israeli Arabs, who make up some 20 percent of the country's population.
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