‘You can’t talk about two states and also sovereignty,’ says Danon; challenge on Netanyahu’s leadership to return party to roots.
By Shimon Cohen, Ari Yashar, INN
After Likud MK Moshe Feiglin left the race for leadership of the party, only Likud Central Committee chairperson MK Danny Danon is left facing off against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for control of Likud.
Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Danon said that despite the frequent controversy between himself and Netanyahu the current race is not a personal matter, but rather a conflict over which path and values Likud should pursue.
With Labor joining with Hatnua and running neck and neck with Likud according to polls, Danon was asked whether Feiglin may not have been right to withdraw from the race, citing the need for unity in the party to deal with challenges from without.
“The Likud party is a democratic party and there is a struggle on ideology and path, and I stick to the principles. We must return the Likud to its true path. If we don’t do so, we will have a problem winning in elections and forming a coalition government,” said Danon.
Explaining the ideological struggle within the party, he added “you can’t talk about two states and also about applying sovereignty (in Judea and Samaria), talk about social issues when in effect the economy and the society are in withdrawal.”
“We must return to the true Likud. I will accept the selection of the members, but we must return the Likud to the place it needs to be in,” said Danon.
Referencing highly controversial moves taken by the last coalition government, Danon said “the big question is where Likud is heading to, to a Likud that releases terrorists with blood on their hands? Are we headed for a Likud that freezes building in Judea and Samaria?”
“We have to return to the true Likud that sees settlers as pioneers and encourages building, and does Zionist acts and not those that try to satisfy Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid in processes that weaken the state of Israel,” said Danon.
Political savvy or selling out values?
Danon rejected claims that Netanyahu acted in a politically savvy manner by letting Hatnua head Livni manage peace talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and thereby prove agreements can’t be reached, and let Yesh Atid head Lapid who ran on a financial agenda run the Ministry of Finance and generally fail in doing so.
“It was a mistake to form a government with Livni as the first minister to enter the coalition, it was a mistake to turn her into the one responsible for peace talks and release terrorists and freeze construction, and therefore we need to return to our true roots,” said Danon. “We were elected to lead the state so as to conduct Likud policy, and not so as to be contractors for the left in Israel.”
Responding to polls that indicate Likud under Danon would receive 17 seats as opposed to the roughly 22 recent polls have given it under Netanyahu, he noted “that’s before the campaign has started. Many believe in the justice that I present. If we return to our roots we’ll get a lot more mandates that will allow us to lead the state, and we won’t be neutralized every time by attempts to survive and vacillate.”
Some have claimed Netanyahu will return to right-wing policy after having gotten rid of Lapid and Livni, as seen in recent budget allocations to Judea and Samaria that Lapid had previously blocked, but Danon said “it’s not enough to talk right-wing, you have to act right-wing.”
“You have to look at the activities of the government in the last two years, the negotiations that were held in the last two years by Netanyahu, and to make sure that Likud will be a right-central party and not a center party. We have to act this way without hesitation,” said Danon.
Danon said his running against Netanyahu isn’t personal, even though Netanyahu fired him from his post as Deputy Defense Minister over Danon’s criticism during Operation Protective Edge. Danon at the time slammed Netanyahu for agreeing to numerous ceasefires with the Hamas terrorist group, even before the terror tunnels were lethally unveiled and dealt with, thereby potentially leaving them as a threat.
“This is not a personal struggle but a struggle on the path. In Protective Edge I opposed the hesitation and also the end of the operation. It’s legitimate that there be different opinions in the same party,” he said.
bernard ross Said:
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
Standard Israeli operating procedure!!!!
Israel Hits Murderous Office in Gaza
ISL – Gaza
In another great military victory for the Israeli Defense Forces, an entire office, belonging to PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh from the Hamas, was obliterated. Fortunately, the office was empty so no innocent terrorists were hurt in the daring, pre-dawn raid.
Minister of Defense Ehud Barak praised the Israeli Air Force which managed a direct hit at the terrorist office without damaging any other nearby innocent offices, “In accordance with international law Israel takes great care in preserving the lives of innocent buildings,” Barak said, “Even though in this case, as in many others, the vile terrorists hide their offices among many other, civilian offices”.
PM Haniyeh himself said that he was glad that the Israel destroyed his office, “I hated it – the color scheme was terrible and the view of Gaza city was even worse.”
The Palestinian PM also said that he already has prepared the plans for a new office which will be done in the Bauhaus style – I am a great fan of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,” said the PM, “And I’m really excited about the new décor.”
Israeli PM Ehud Olmert praised the decisive action and especially pointed out the diligence of the forces in sparing the lives of Haniyeh and his henchmen, “Sooner or later we will have to talk with Haniyeh or someone like him so there is no point in killing him, in fact, it will only make matters worse,” said Olmert,
“‘Better the genocidal maniac you know’ is our policy,” said the PM.
The PM’s office is already preparing the Next Great 10-Year Peace Plan which will deeply involve the radical Hamas, “Nobody likes to be left out, especially dedicated anti-Semitic murderers and criminals like the Hamas so, in this respect, it is obvious that we have to bear some of the responsibility for the situation in Gaza,” Olmert said.
Olmert added that he hopes that the ritual hostilities will be over as quickly as possible so that the Peace talks between the parties can resume, “I need at least one Peace Conference a week or else I’m just not myself,” Olmert admitted.
SHmuel HaLevi 2 Said:
😛 😛 😛
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
And we have excellent nus….
Netanyah and Ya’alon proclaimed in unison that they will not tolerate even one rocket from Gaza w/o response.
They bombed 90 concrete construction blocks, standard issue. Two pallets. Next time they will even bomb three pallets.
@ bernard ross:
They run to Kerry because they are sinking at the polls.
Not even a remote chance of getting elected to form a government.
SHmuel HaLevi 2 Said:
A pair of schnorers!
Obama/ kerry foreign stooges Livni and Peres rund to their puppet masters for help in getting their merged parties elected and then Livni has the audacity to claim diplomatic victory because her puppet master want to help get her and herzog
elected.
As I understand it neither of these two opportunistic meddlers hold any office in the GOI so they are not coordinating their actions with the GOI but acting solely in their own interests as agents of foreign governments. They should be required to register as foreign agent stooges.
@ ArnoldHarris:
I do not know if you have read about Peres and Livni running to Kerry asking him to help them by TEMPORARILY holding back the Arabs in Eretz Israel UN petition until after the elections. Beside the fact that the two criminals did that sabotaging the State, it also shows their desperation as they see their numbers plunging.
Everyone knows that Peres is a perennial saboteur but Livni is terrified that she may be dumped by Hertzog soon.
The story is on Arutz 7 in ENglish.
One sure thing: the West will not do any favor to Israel but will not promote the destruction of a democracy. IL needs to do what is in her interest. IL remains the Light unto the nations.
Predictions of Netanyahu all but abandoning every policy Likud has stood for, and setting up an unimaginable coalition with the leftists and religious parties — are having crafted the coming early elections by dumping Livni and Lapid from his government — sound ridiculous. If Netanyahu were to make such a move, most of his own Likud party would dump him; his name would be tarnished in Jewish history as a low scoundrel, and he would be trusted neither by his enemies nor whomever remained of his supporters.
The polls more or less consistently show Likud and Netanyahu, along with Bennett’s, Liberman’s and various breakway rightwingers, plus the two Jewish religious parties, will win some 70-75 Knesset seats in the coming 2015 election. That would in fact be a stronger coalition than anything recently seen in Israeli electoral history. Obviously, such a government would demand from Netanyahu abandonment of whatever is left of tattered and implausible Oslo agreement, along with steady and non-stop Jewish settlement-building, and as soon as possible, annexation of Area C. That, in turn, would kill of the shabby “Palestine Authority” façade of the Fatah gang, along with a long-awaited opportunity to negotiate local autonomy separately with the urban Arab hamulas that run the various Arab-populated cities, which is probably the only long-term policy that Israel can force into place that offers likelihood of success in restoring relative peace and tranquility for both Jews and Arabs — all of which is precisely what Bennett has been correctly urging.
Netanyahu is not a hero to a large number of Israelis. But many of these, according to the polls, also represent responses from people who mostly neglect to vote in Israeli elections. These polls also show that despite the dislike and distrust, nobody else in Israel has been awarded any would-be role as the next moshiach of the Knesset, and people tend to go with whom and what they know rather than the unknown stranger. So I think Netanyahu and Likud will win the election and act accordingly, whether or not our waning President of the United States likes it or lumps it for the remaining 25 months of his remaining political career.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb wI
NormanF Said:
Of course it can be worse and most certainly will be worse with a labor Livni government, are you jesting Norman. They will do a deal with obama,a dirty rotten deal and palestine, a terrorist state will arise in israel’s pericardial sac.
Netanyahu, obviously will not. If netanyahu loses, obama wins, can that be good for Israel. Only if Netanyahu is replaced by Bennet, however; that can not happen. he needs more experience. The public will back Bibi to counter obama, bet ya. Let Netanyahu run out the clock on obama. Netanyahu will be, must be returned or hopefully with a clear right wing majority. Labor Herzog/Livni is suicide. All hell will break loose within 3 months.
Re: Israel – To whom it may concern in Europe and the US and elsewhere:
We are tired of hearing that withdrawal from Judea and Samaria will bring peace. We know and you know that it would bring another Gaza. So stop saying it and promoting this fallacy. Past experience has proven that concessions, appeasement and land for peace only increased terror, violence and more conflict.
We are tired of hearing that land beyond the Green Line is ‘Palestinian land’. The Green Line is simply an armistice line that has no political significance. You know this too. The San Remo Treaty of 1920 Granted the Mandate for Palestine to the Jewish people, the same Allied powers also established 21 Arab States and one Jewish State – The Arabs are not willing to give up any part of the 21 Arab States and the Jews are not willing to give up any part of the Jewish State.
We are tired of hearing about the “Palestinian people.” They are no different from the Arabs of Syria or Egypt, from which most of their ancestors migrated in the last 150 years or so. There is no Palestinian language or religion, and until very recently they considered themselves simply ‘Arabs’. Their culture is almost entirely defined by their opposition to the Jewish state. There never was an Arab-Palestinian State or people in History. The Arab Palestinians have a State in Jordan which is 80% of the land originally allocated to the Jewish people under the San Remo Treaty of 1920.
We are tired of hearing that “the Palestinians deserve a state.” We are indigenous here, not them, and their behavior entitles them more to a trial at The Hague than to a state. The Arab Palestinians have a State it is called Jordan which was carved out of Jewish allocated land.
And they certainly don’t deserve our state, which is the only state they want. They already took 80% of Jewish allocated land which is Jordan. Israel also gave them the Gaza Strip.
We are tired of hearing about ‘The Occupation’. As Minister Naftali Bennett said the other day, you can’t be an occupier in your own land. The Arabs are the occupiers, Greater Israel has been a Jewish state for 4,000 years even if it was temporarily conquered and occupied by various nations over the centuries.
We are tired of hearing that “settlements are illegal under international law.” They are not. The San Remo Treaty of 1920 expliciptly stated that Jewish people can reside anywhere in the Mandate for Palestine, those terms are set in perpetuity.
We are tired of hearing that “settlement construction is an obstacle to peace.” Arab rejectionism and terrorism is the reason there is no peace. When the Arab-Palestinians teach and preach hate, terror and destruction to their children, this is definitely not a road to peace and coexistence.
By the way, we are pro-peace. We are just not pro-suicide and self destruction.
We are tired of hearing about the 5 million (or whatever ridiculous number there are alleged to be) ‘Arab-Palestinian refugees’ or the ‘Arab-Palestinian diaspora’. There were about 600,000 Arabs that left their homes in 1948, mostly of their own volition, more or less at the same time as the 980,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, of which the Arabs confiscated their homes and assets. We resettled ours with limited land and resources — resettle yours, the 21 Arab states have more land and resources.
We are tired of hearing anything from anyone associated with the U.N. The U.N. is a parasitic and criminal enterprise dominated by our mortal enemies. The U.N. cannot create states, it can only recommend and so can other nations only recommend and not create a state that never existed before in history. If they want an Arab-Palestinian state, it already exists, it is Jordan which has taken 80% of Jewish allocated land.
We are tired of stupid post-colonialist rhetoric. We are not ‘colonists’ and Arabs do not have the right to murder us in the name of ‘resistance’ or beheading Jewish Rabbi’s in Jerusalem’s Har Nof Synagogue. Talking this way reveals you as moral imbeciles. They train their children to be suicide bombers.
You can not recognize a state and people that never existed and that has no borders, no single government, and no economy. They are not trusted by Arab states either.
We know we can not depend on any kind of security guarantee from anyone except the Israel Defense Forces. So stop being insulted because we do not trust you. And do not ask us to give up any nuclear weapons we might or might not have or any other method and technology that could help protect us.
We know that the left-wing parties in Israel are bankrupt of ideas. We are not going to vote for them, no matter how much you would like us to. So do not bother trying to influence our election. We will only vote for a government that protects its people and cares about the Jewish heritage, more than it cares for world opinion.
Don’t believe what you read in Ha’aretz newspaper, they represent a minority that has no allegiance to the Jewish heritage.
Jerusalem, undivided, is the capital of the state of Israel. Get used to it, because you can’t change it, the Jewish temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem.
Sincerely,
Ordinary Israelis who care about their heritage.
Posted by: YJ Draiman
@ ArnoldHarris:
yamit82 Said:
Its not at all impossible Herzog could become Prime Minister. People are sick of Netanyahu and after three terms they want a fresh face. The Likud carried out Labor Party policies in its last stint in office and if it loses as the polls seem to indicate, things will hardly get worse.
Here is another scenario.
Likud 21-27 mandates
Labor/livni 20-25
Bennett get 15 if Tekuma leaves.
BB forms unity coalition with Labor religious parties and leaves out the rest.
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
Shmuel, from the cumulative polls that you cite, I think we can estimate at least 73 seats and perhaps as many as 75 for the Jewish nationalist and religious coalition likely to be voted into power in the coming spring Knesset election.
If so, that will be one of the strongest electoral mandates in Israel since the days of David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and Golda Meir. I further think that at this time, no such mandate will be assembled without the leadership of Binyamin Netanyahu at the helm of Likud. Moshe Feiglin was clearly correct in standing down from an effort to take down Netanyahu at this juncture. In any case, I think Bennett will prove to be the next great leader of the true Zionist bloc in the Knesset.
I further think that outside events and political pressure from Bennett, Feiglin, Danon and numerous others are likely to move the new government into resuming non-freeze Jewish development of all parts of Area C, along with multi-stage annexation of that 62 per cent of Shomron and Yehuda. Moreover, I think all that will cause the breakup of Fatah and its pretenses of a ‘Palestine Authority’, to be replaced by local autonomy for each of about eight or nine Arab-populated cities in Shomron and Yehuda, with the Arab residents of these cities to be represented by combinations of the hamulas (blood-relationship urban Arab clans) which prevail in all those cities.
In order to set all this in motion, large-scale pressure mounted by all the Zionists of Israel and the Jewish nation should be mobilized to help pursued the new government that no two-state solution is possible, and never will be possible, and that Shomron and Yehuda are in fact the key geographic underpinnings of the Jewish commonwealth, and have played such a role since the large-scale settlement in HaAretz of our ancient Hebrew-speaking tribes almost 35 centuries ago. What the soldiers of the Jewish nation have liberated with their own blood almost 50 years ago must never be permitted by any Jewish government to be torn from the grasp of the Jewish nation and the Jewish state.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The hybrid Herzog-Livni is garnering according to our HS youngsters run poll, the princely total of 15 mandates and falling. Those according to a cumulative poll in the North. The data is extracted from responses by people from Akko to Zefat and from Naharia to Haifa.
LIKUD 24 +
Jewish Home 19 +
Herzog Livni: 15 ?
Islamics: 11
Lapid: 9 ?
Kohalon: 9 ?
Lieberman: 9
meretz: 7
Torah: 7
Shas: 5
Ishai: 5 ?