FACTBOX-Five facts on Israel's Avigdor Lieberman
March 16 (Reuters) - Avigdor Lieberman would become Israeli foreign minister, his spokeswoman said on Monday, if an outline coalition deal he agreed with Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu takes effect. Here are some facts about Lieberman:
* Born Evet Lieberman in the Soviet city of Kishinev, now Chisinau, capital of Moldova, on June 5, 1958, Lieberman studied at the local agricultural institute. His father Lev was a Red Army veteran who was taken prisoner by the Germans and later spent seven years in a Siberian Gulag labour camp under Stalin.
* With his parents, who had met in Siberia, Lieberman immigrated to Israel in 1978, aged 20, part of an early influx of Jews from the Soviet Union. Others came in much larger numbers in the 1990s, after the collapse of Communism. Changing his name to Avigdor, he added Hebrew to his native Russian. He also speaks English and the Romanian of Moldova.
* He served as an army corporal, took a social science degree and held various jobs, including as an airport baggage handler and a much-cited spell as a nightclub bouncer. While a student in Jerusalem, he began his career as an activist in the right-wing Likud party of then Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
* Administrative head of Likud from 1993, he ran the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from 1996 to 1997. Frustrated with coalition politics, he founded Yisrael Beiteinu (Our Home is Israel) in 1999, calling for a strong presidency and a peace deal with the Palestinians under which Israel would swap land on which many of its 1.5 million Arab citizens live for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Buoyed by support among the massive influx of Russian speakers in the 1990s, he served in three governments from 2001 to 2008. He has called a recent police probe into his affairs a smear campaign, though there has been speculation it could hinder his ambitions.
* He quit Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition in January 2008 in protest at U.S.-sponsored talks with the Palestinians. He questions the loyalties of Israel's Arab citizens and rhetoric widely seen as anti-Arab has won a large following beyond his Russian-speaking base. Lieberman rejects sharing Jerusalem with a Palestinian state and a withdrawal from West Bank settlements like Nokdim, where he has lived since 1988 with Ella, his wife of 28 years. They have a daughter and two sons. (Reporting by Alastair Macdonald) (Sources: www.knesset.gov.il; ndi.org.il; www.dorledor.info) (For blogs and links on Israeli politics and other Israeli and Palestinian news, go to blogs.reuters.com/axismundi)
* Born Evet Lieberman in the Soviet city of Kishinev, now Chisinau, capital of Moldova, on June 5, 1958, Lieberman studied at the local agricultural institute. His father Lev was a Red Army veteran who was taken prisoner by the Germans and later spent seven years in a Siberian Gulag labour camp under Stalin.
* With his parents, who had met in Siberia, Lieberman immigrated to Israel in 1978, aged 20, part of an early influx of Jews from the Soviet Union. Others came in much larger numbers in the 1990s, after the collapse of Communism. Changing his name to Avigdor, he added Hebrew to his native Russian. He also speaks English and the Romanian of Moldova.
* He served as an army corporal, took a social science degree and held various jobs, including as an airport baggage handler and a much-cited spell as a nightclub bouncer. While a student in Jerusalem, he began his career as an activist in the right-wing Likud party of then Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
* Administrative head of Likud from 1993, he ran the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from 1996 to 1997. Frustrated with coalition politics, he founded Yisrael Beiteinu (Our Home is Israel) in 1999, calling for a strong presidency and a peace deal with the Palestinians under which Israel would swap land on which many of its 1.5 million Arab citizens live for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Buoyed by support among the massive influx of Russian speakers in the 1990s, he served in three governments from 2001 to 2008. He has called a recent police probe into his affairs a smear campaign, though there has been speculation it could hinder his ambitions.
* He quit Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition in January 2008 in protest at U.S.-sponsored talks with the Palestinians. He questions the loyalties of Israel's Arab citizens and rhetoric widely seen as anti-Arab has won a large following beyond his Russian-speaking base. Lieberman rejects sharing Jerusalem with a Palestinian state and a withdrawal from West Bank settlements like Nokdim, where he has lived since 1988 with Ella, his wife of 28 years. They have a daughter and two sons. (Reporting by Alastair Macdonald) (Sources: www.knesset.gov.il; ndi.org.il; www.dorledor.info) (For blogs and links on Israeli politics and other Israeli and Palestinian news, go to blogs.reuters.com/axismundi)
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