Lebanon’s Hezbollah accuses Livni of seeking to expel Arab Israelis once Palestinian state is created.

BEIRUT - Lebanese Hezbollah accused Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday of wanting to expel Arab Israelis after saying their national aspirations lay outside the Jewish state.

"It is not at all surprising that an Israeli official would hold this position, for the Zionist plan is essentially based on expelling an entire population from its land," a Hezbollah statement said.

"We point out these comments to the international community, which continues to ignore the racist reality of the Zionist entity.

"As long as blood continues to flow in the veins of the resistance, all of Palestine will remain Palestinian," it added.

On Thursday, Livni said "my solution for maintaining a Jewish and democratic state of Israel is to have two distinct national entities."

Once a Palestinian state is established, she said she would "be able to approach the Palestinian residents of Israel, those whom we call Arab Israelis, and tell them: 'your national aspirations lie elsewhere.'"

Her remarks drew an angry rebuttal from Arab Israeli MP Ahmed Tibi and from the Palestinian Authority of president Mahmud Abbas, and she tempered them the following day.

"She must decide whether she means to leave a million Arabs without political rights or a national identity, or whether she really intends to transfer a million Arab citizens to the Palestinian state that will be established," Tibi said.

On Friday, Livni repeated her assertion that "the national aspirations (of the Arabs) should be realised elsewhere," but added that "there is no question of carrying out a transfer or forcing them to leave."

Israel has often come under international criticism for ‘racism’ and mistreatment of its Arab minority, who are the original inhabitants of the land and today make up one fifth of its total population.

The Arab population is comprised of the descendants of the Palestinians who remained in their land despite being subjected to an Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing during the creation of Israel.

Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid that aimed to free Lebanese soldiers from Israeli prisons. The bodies of the soldiers were returned in a prisoner swap earlier this year.

The war claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

Hezbollah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, had forced the Israeli military out of Lebanon in 2000. Israel, however, continues to occupy the Lebanese Shabaa Farms.