After years of legal tribulations and police probes into corruption charges against him, Avigdor Lieberman, one of the major players in Israeli politics, resumed office as the country's foreign minister.

Lieberman, who consolidated his status as a prominent political figure in the past 20 years, re-entered the foreign ministry on Tuesday after a yearlong hiatus.

He was forced to resign nearly a year ago amid an indictment filed against him on charges of fraud and breach of trust, in a case where he allegedly promoted a diplomat who gave him secret information about a police probe against him.

After his acquittal in early November, the cabinet and the knesset (parliament) approved his return to the political sphere and he resumed the post kept for him by his political ally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, since January's elections.

Lieberman was born in 1958 in Kishinev, then part of the Soviet Union. His family retained a strong Jewish identity while facing anti-Semitism. Lieberman was denied higher education due to his ethnicity.

He moved to Israel in 1978 and after military service attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he studied international relations and political science and joined a students group affiliated with the Likud.

He started working with then upcoming politician Benjamin Netanyahu in 1988, the same year in which he moved with his family to the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, where he still resides.

When Netanyahu became chairman of the Likud party in 1993, Lieberman became the director-general of the party. After Netanyahu was elected as prime minister in 1996, Lieberman became the Director-General of his office.

In 1997, however, a diplomatic turn caused Lieberman to rethink his steps and brought him to form his own party.

Netanyahu then signed the Wye River Memorandum, a deal to implement an earlier interim agreement with the Palestinians, which concerned several land concessions in the West Bank. Lieberman was furious and resigned from his post.

In the 1990's, a wave of more than one million Jewish people living in the former Soviet Union emigrated to Israel following its collapse. In 1997, there was only one party appealing to the Soviet migrants, called Israel BeAlyeh, which won 7 seats in the 1996 elections.

Lieberman, who was disappointed that the right-leaning parties which did not resign from the government, decided to create his own party, Israel Beytenu (Israel is our home) in 1999. The party became a new home for right-wing soviet immigrants with a hardline approach towards the Palestinians.

The party did well in the 2000's and Lieberman served as minister in three governments. His major achievement came in 2009, when his party became the third largest (with 15 seats in parliament) following Likud and Kadima, then led by dovish Tzipi Livni.

Also, Lieberman was the swing vote in deciding who will be named prime minister. Livni and Netanyahu got almost the same amount of votes, Lieberman helped Netanyahu form a viable coalition that pushed the president to nominate Netanyahu to the post.

An Israeli official told Xinhua that what got Lieberman thus far is his sharp political instinct. "He knows how important it is to follow where the wind blows and how to place your bet on a winning horse, and will, if necessary, switch teams in order to make a political gain."

Along with his sharp political instincts, Lieberman was outspoken in his campaigns about his nationalistic views. He prided himself on being "the only one who understands Arab" -- meaning the only one who can "deal" with the so-called Arab ' threat'. Another campaign slogan of his aimed at Israel's Arab citizens read "no loyalty - no citizenship."

He brewed a plan to exchange territories with the Palestinian Authority, in which Israel's Arab citizens would be transferred to the Palestinians, but he eventually backed out of this plan.

After the 2009 elections, he told "the Jewish week" that he does support a Palestinian state and would even concede to evacuating settlements, including Nokdim, if a "real solution" is found, explaining his change of heart with the "changes in reality. "

Netanyahu and Lieberman announced in October 2012 the merge of the Likud and Israel Beytenu. However, at the end of this month, the two parties are likely to announce separation due to the growing pressure from within both sides.

If that would be the case, there's reason to believe that, argued Haaretz's political pundit Yossi Verter, Lieberman will work to consolidate his status as the right-wing leader in order to inherit Netanyahu's position in the future.