Danon: ‘The international community can say whatever they want, and we can do whatever we want'”
By Raphael Ahren, TIMES OF iSRAEL
With the Likud-Beytenu and Jewish Home parties opposed to a two-state solution, efforts at negotiations are futile, Danny Danon says
Israel’s ruling party and the governing coalition are staunchly opposed to a two-state solution and would block the creation of a Palestinian state if such a proposal ever came to a vote, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon said, contradicting statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior cabinet members who say Jerusalem is committed to the principle of two states for two peoples.
Danon’s statements, made Wednesday to The Times of Israel in his first major interview with an Israeli news outlet since he became deputy minister, underline the low likelihood of the current government being able to sign a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
“Look at the government: there was never a government discussion, resolution or vote about the two-state solution,” Danon said. “If you will bring it to a vote in the government — nobody will bring it to a vote, it’s not smart to do it — but if you bring it to a vote, you will see the majority of Likud ministers, along with the Jewish Home [party], will be against it.”
Danon said Netanyahu calls for peace talks despite his government’s opposition because he knows Israel will never arrive at an agreement with the Palestinians. “Today we’re not fighting it [Netanyahu’s declared goal of a Palestinian state], but if there will be a move to promote a two-state solution, you will see forces blocking it within the party and the government,” Danon said.
“If there’s a move to promote a two-state solution, forces will block it within the party and the government’
The deputy minister said “there is no majority for a two-state solution” among the 31 lawmakers that make up the Likud-Yisrael Beytenu Knesset faction. The Likud party’s central committee, about 10 years ago, passed a motion against the creation of a Palestinian state, Danon said, adding that “legally” the party was opposed to the concept of two states for two people.
In a much touted 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, Netanyahu in principle agreed to a Palestinian state, on the condition that it be demilitarized and it recognizes Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. In recent weeks the prime minister has vowed to cooperate with US efforts to restart peace negotiations and has repeatedly called on Palestinian leaders to resume talks without preconditions.
On Tuesday, International Relations and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz acknowledged that some members of the government oppose the two-state solution but asserted that “the entire cabinet” backs Netanyahu’s efforts to arrive at a two-state solution.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu made it very clear that he and his cabinet and the entire government are totally committed to his Bar-Ilan speech about [a] two state for two peoples solution,” Steinitz told reporters in Jerusalem. “And even if there are different positions within the coalition or the government, any member of the government is very well aware [of] and therefore committed to the prime minister’s vision, to the prime minister’s approach.”
Several key members of the current government, including Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin, coalition chairman Yariv Levin and other senior Likud MKs, are staunchly opposed to a two-state solution, advocating instead the partial or complete annexation of the West Bank to Israel. The entire 12-member Jewish Home faction, including three ministers, likewise rejects the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
The members of the remaining parties in the coalition — Yesh Atid and Hatnua — fully endorse a two-state solution, yet together have merely 25 Knesset seats, compared to a combined 43 mandates of Jewish Home and Likud-Beytenu.
Hatnua chairwoman and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who has been tasked with conducting peace talks with the Palestinians, acknowledged that some in the government “pray” for her failure but said that she is willing to attempt a peace agreement nonetheless.
“I know that I have the support of the prime minister in the attempts to relaunch the negotiations,” Livni told reporters last week. “You’re asking about the government? It’s a coalition, with different parties. I am going to have the support of some, and other would pray that maybe it would not succeed.”
Even Jewish Home chairman and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said he is “willing to live with negotiations,” Livni added. “So this is a window that I can work [with] — for a while. This is the coalition that was created, and frankly it is not the coalition that I wanted, and it was not, maybe, the coalition that the prime minister wanted. But this is what we have and we need to work with it.”
Speaking to The Times of Israel in his Knesset office, Danon said that there is currently zero debate about the two-state solution within the Likud because there is no “viable partner” on the Palestinian side and it seems unlikely that peace talks would resume any time soon. In recent weeks, US Secretary of State John Kerry has engaged in shuttle diplomacy in a serious bid to get the two sides to return to the negotiating table — so far to no avail.
If Kerry were to succeed, however, and Netanyahu and the Palestinians agreed on the implementation of a two-state solution, “then you have a conflict” within the government, Danon said. “But today there is no partner, no negotiations, so it’s a discussion. It’s more of an academic discussion.”
Asked whether Netanyahu truly is in favor of a two-state solution, Danon replied that the prime minister tied the creation of a Palestinian state to conditions he is certain the Palestinians will not agree to. “He knows that in the near future it’s not possible.”
‘US condemnation of East Jerusalem building is racist’
Speaking about the international community’s routine condemnations of Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, Danon reiterated his position that the government can do whatever it pleases wherever it pleases.
“The international community can say whatever they want, and we can do whatever we want,” he said.
Danon said he stood by comments he made before he became deputy defense minister, in which he suggested Washington’s rebukes of Israel expanding Jewish neighborhoods beyond the 1967 lines are racist.
In November, after US President Obama won a second term in the White House, Danon released a statement that read: “Instead of wasting time and resources to impose housing zoning laws on Israel that can be described as nothing less than ‘racist,’ now is the time for our two nations to come together to combat the greatest threat to freedom in our time.”
During Wednesday’s interview, Danon said that at the time he was referring to Obama stating that “Jews should not build in Gilo.” According to Danon, Obama “could have said: ‘Until the final agreement in Jerusalem, I expect that Jews and the Arabs will not take unilateral action.’” But by saying that “Jews” should not build in East Jerusalem, he was created an unfair distinction, Danon suggested.
Asked to provide the exact quote in which Obama allegedly singled out Jews for building in East Jerusalem, Danon’s office stated that news articles often use the terms “Jewish” and “Israel” interchangeably.
“So what he was saying was that the American policy that disallowed the building of Jewish/Israeli homes in certain parts of Jerusalem while not commenting at all on Palestinian illegal construction all over Jerusalem can definitely be described as racist,” a senior adviser said.
I hope they prevail.
I have a difference of opinion with Daniel Pipes. I believe that a majority of the Jewish diaspora is against IL. He disagreed force with mefully. I see the evidence every day.
@ rongrand:
I agree. The majority of Americans support Israel but that majority does not include the70% of Jews who voted for Obama.Like Obama they give lip service to their support of Israel but that’s as far as it goes.
@ oldjerry:
Let’s say a majority of Americans are Israel’s best friend, not the present administration.
Better still this administration is not the best friend of a majority of Americans.
The USA is not Israel’s best friend. The Palestinians are. Were it not for their intransigence in not accepting every suicidal land offer made to them by Israel’s insane leadership there would be no Israel today.
If it’s not apparent to all but the most obtuse, that BB and the present government of Israel have put Israel in mortal danger, then we are really in mortal danger. I have lived in Israel through many governments and leaders and have been in opposition to every government since Eshkol. I have never though been as concerned as I am today with the current BB led government. Not because they are intrinsically worse than previous governments but because they are no better. They have neither learned from or internalized the lessons from past Israeli government mistakes and what makes our situation more tenuous than with previous governments are the present and growing threats against us from every direction which we face.
It’s beyond my comprehension, why Israel has not left skid marks escaping from America if not years ago then at least over the last 41/2 years since Hussein Obama coming to power.
McClatchy Washington Bureau
U.S. publishes details of missile base Israel wanted kept secret
By Sheera Frenkel | McClatchy Foreign Staff
Obama and the Arrow 3 debacle
This is not the first time Obama has put a knife in Israel’s back: ‘Foreign Policy’ claims Azerbaijan granted Israel access to air bases along Iran’s northern border for potential use in strike.
Secretary of Defense Gates announced on ‘Face the Nation’ that Israel possessed Nukes. Every Israel military secret has been leaked to the media, at least those America knows about. Obamas policy of knocking off one reactionary Arab country after another (bordering Israel) and replacing them with radical Muslim regimes encircling Israel from every direction and non prevention of Iran from gaining Nukes, while restraining and blocking Israel from doing so; speaks to his and Americas intentions for us.
I agree with Sultan Knish that Peace with the “Fakestinians” is like the old Dutch Tulip Economy, where they traded fortunes for flowers. In the case of Israel, ‘they have traded and would (under a future agreement) be trading away most of their territory for worthless pieces of paper that last about as long as tulips do.’
Some years ago, I read that Shimon Peres, when he was younger and sounding far more realistic about Israel and the Middle East than he does now in his relatively old age, said that there are no solutions to the problems of the Middle East, because these are fundamental conditions, not problems. Conditions have no solutions; only the foresight to live and build Israel around such conditions.
The so-called “two-state solution” is a chimera fostered on one hand by the peculiar Jewish proclivity toward notions of fixing the world as well as by the practices of a large succession of US presidential administrations to erect Potemkin villages of world-fixing master plans that clearly have no basis in reality but which they think sound promising to their increasingly restless population of voters who are not yet accustomed to the realities of a world that the United States has not been in position to fully control since September 1949, when atmospheric evidence clearly showed that Stalin’s Soviet Union had detonated their first nuclear bomb.
I think that if Peres had the courage and common sense to be honest about this entire question, he would agree with opinions such as mine that Israel must expand, not shrink its borders. If a Palestinian Arab state were in fact to be recognized, the result would prove to be the beginning of a long and painful end to the Jewish state. Exactly as the reduction of ancient Carthage to that city itself and a small patch of land around it, inevitably led to the final destruction of that city-state by the victorious Roman Republic about one century before the acme of power of Gaius Julius Caesar.
Jewish Israel can only survive by expanding its borders to create a territory that can encompass and support a Jewish population of at least some 25 million, with sufficient lands to provide the same kind of defensive buffer zone that any other country in a situation even remotely comparable to that of Israel would require. This means an eastern border on the edge of the Syrian Desert to the east, the Suez Canal and Gulf of Suez to the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the Litani River gorge to the north, some sort of land connection to the Kurdish uplands on the northeast, and the Straits of Tiran and the open Red Sea to the south.
The only way that process can be started is to stop in its tracks any possibility of an Arab state in the highlands of Shomron and Yehuda north and south of Jerusalem. And the only way to achieve that is for Israel to annex Area C as defined on the Oslo Accords maps, which contains some 72 percent of the Shomron and Yehuda lands, including the full length of the Jordan River valley as an immediate defensive line to the east. Once that is achieved and the annexed lands are hardened with even larger scale settlement than has taken place to date, the rest of the Arab-populated parts of Shomron and Yehuda would have no other feasible future than as a collection of autonomous local cities and villages. Would that constitute real peace? Perhaps not the kind of peace that Europe achieved after the end of World War II, but far more stable than anything we have seen to date.
In any case, Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, must consider its own needs, rights and priorities, irrespective of what the rest of the world thinks the Jews ought to want.
So I hope that Deputy Defense Minister Danon is correct in his assumption that most of the ruling coalition will never agree to establishment of an independent Arab state in the middle of the ancient Jewish heartlands of Shomron and Yehuda.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
comment in moderation??
Is it due to my criticism of the Zero Danon?
Yidvocate Said:
Danon is a flunky demogogue who actions never mimic his words. He know BB has shut down all construction in Y&S and Jerusalem but claims there is no freeze.
He is deputy DM and should know that the policy of the IDF is to not confront violence against Jews by Arabs and that every Jew driving the roads of Y&S is taking their lives in their own hands yet he is quiet. He is quiet every-time the IDF demolishes a Jewish structure but protects the Arabs. He claims to be against a 2 state policy yet he is silent over ceding Jewish land to the Arabs for massive building of new cities and towns, some taken from the Jews. I can provide a long list of misdeeds by this and past governments he served under but seldom if ever did anything to change the situation within the coalition or to challenge BB directly over his Breach of party platform and anti-Likud and Zionist policies. He reminds me of the 3 monkeys
@ bernard ross:
My explanation for what it’s worth is that GOI is a collection of loose cannons. There is no party discipline and much less coalition discipline.
Danon is a strong Zionist and supporter of the Greater Land of Israel. He is happy to cut BB off at the knees and is not afraid of the international community, like BB. BB may be playing the game, or not, Danon means what he says and doesn’t share BB’s cynicism.
If this were true then why reveal it, after all, the internationals would be very pissed off to learn they are being played. Unless everyone has agreed on a way forward and this is just drama for the street. Is it possible that Mr. Danon is pulling wool over our eyes, lulling us into a false sense of security? I do not understand the timing of this remark which occurs simultaneously with the US pressure from Kerry. something remains unexplained.
Yidvocate Said:
Of course, the “Palestinians” don’t exist! They are a pan-Arab tool created to make Israel’s destruction easier to attain. They do not want a separate state, coexistence and peace. Their actions and their words prove it. Only Israel’s Stupid Jews keep begging them to allow them to give away their homeland to them. Except Israel has an implacable foe that will never allow them to do what G-d forbids. When the Jews stop rebelling against Heaven, then will they find true peace.
This whole “Two states for two peoples” paradigm needs desperately to be deconstructed and reframed as it is entirely divorced from reality and paints Israel as the bad guy.
There are no “two people” involved unless you concede that our foes are the Arab “people” or Umah as they refer to themselves. The paly thing is complete fiction and paints them as the underdog. As Arabs, we come into sharp focus as the underdogs and as Arabs, they already have 21 states and as either Arabs or palys, two states in fact already in the lands comprising the British Mandate of Palestine.
These Arab squatters in J&S where all “Jordanians” until they woke up one morning just a few short decades ago as the “Ancient Palestinian People” under the “brutal occupation” of the Israeli.
As Jordanians, they have no claim to J&S so they morphed into something that could asset a claim, as bogus as it is.
This fiction has to stop and all hasbara energy should be directed to this end.
While many people are concerned about the Habara issue, it would be nice if every single minister, deputy minister, or any other self-appointed government official could keep to one message with the government. There really should be one voice and one message coming out of the Israeli government regarding the peace issue, or any other foreign policy issue. The Israeli form of government necessitates the inclusion of parties that have different viewpoints, but it seeme that there should be an agreement that if you are part of the government, you accept the government position. When one minister says one thing , and another says something else on the same issue, is it any wonder that the rest of the world has a problem with Israeli views?
How “this government will block any two-state deal” if said government is even unable to block savage barbarians from performing their terror attacks such as the one which took place a few days ago where Evyatar Borovsky (HY”D)who was murdered by a terrorist.
If “the international community can say whatever they want, and we can do whatever we want,” it would be easier to start first taking adequate actions and act harshly against these savage barbarians, and as we witness, the lack of appropriate actions resulted in the anarchy which prevails currently.
And in the meantime, he should take all steps and measures to enforce and implement the Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty over the Land of Israel.
All talk no action, as usual.
@ NormanF:
@ NormanF:
Hey, Mr. Kerry, nice try, but Israel is not about to roll over and play dead. Her people know well the consequences of the TSS and the ruin it would heap on the Jewish nation.
A peace agreement is impossible. The Arabs don’t want one and Israel cannot force them to accept something they don’t want. And most Israelis are not interested in committing national suicide to make Secretary Kerry happy and which won’t solve the conflict.
Put it another way, TSS has no real chance of ever coming to fruition.