Palestinians who wish to become citizens of Israel are to be made to pledge allegiance to the country as a "Jewish state"

The Israeli prime minister's announcement, which threatened to sour the already hostile atmosphere blighting peace talks with the Palestinian leadership, ignited an immediate storm of protest. Arab leaders holding Israeli citizenship denounced the proposal as racist and there was strong condemnation on the left of Netanyahu's coalition government. The move appeared to be a sop to Avigdor Lieberman, the hawkish foreign minister whose Israel Beiteinu party – the second largest in the coalition – has long accused the country's substantial Arab minority of being disloyal to the Jewish cause. A fifth of Israel's 7.6 million people are Arab, the vast majority of whom were Palestinian until the creation of the state in 1948. The number does not include Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem. Lieberman has demanded that all Israel's Arab citizens, who are predominantly Muslim, be forced to swear loyalty to the state as Jewish.