Making the land whole means war

In a New York Times op-ed today, Knesset deputy speaker Danny Danon (Likud) offers this advice to Israel’s prime minister on how to respond to the Palestinian effort to get General Assembly recognition of statehood in September:

• stop the $1 billion in tax transfers as well as security cooperation;
• annex the Jewish communities (settlements) and uninhabited lands on the West Bank.

Danon then dismisses the prospect of international criticism, saying it will all blow over.  These unilateral actions, Danon says, are an appropriate response to Palestinian unilateral abandonment of the Oslo accords.

It will be news to most of us that abandoning the Oslo accords has been unilateral.  Israel has certainly violated in spirit the provision Danon cites:

“neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”

But I’ll leave it to the lawyers to argue over that.

To me, the interesting thing is what Danon’s piece suggests about Likud’s goals. While claiming that annexation of the settlements would be good for Israeli security, the real message is in the Times’ headline:  “making the land of Israel whole.”

Palestinians often claim that Israel is after land and doesn’t care about peace.  Danon confirms their worst fears.  He wants what Milosevic wanted in Kosovo:  the land without the people, since their numbers would eventually threaten the Jewish majority in Israel.

Danon’s formula would make a Palestinian state not only non-viable but also a constant source of security problems for Israel.  This would not be a frozen conflict but rather a perpetual one. President Obama is unlikely to delve deeply into the Israel/Palestine conflict in today’s speech, but he of course has to do so at AIPAC on Sunday.  He needs to make it absolutely clear to the likes of Danon that the United States will not support an Israel that abandons the two-state solution and condemns the Middle East to perpetual war.