Danon's plan, which is in line with what Israeli hardliners have sought for decades, would amount to an apartheid system for Palestinians, much like that used in white-supremacist South Africa, which confined blacks to townships like Soweto and denied them finances and political rights.
Denouncing J Street
Danon also is demanding that the United States, and especially Jewish-Americans, line up behind Likud policies, whatever they are.
In March, Danon held a Knesset hearing that called on the carpet a liberal Jewish-American group, J Street, for criticizing Likud's expansion of settlements on Palestinian land.
Danon and other hardliners threatened to denounce J Street as anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, which could cost J Street access to American synagogues and other U.S. Jewish centers.
J Street was created three years ago by American Jews uncomfortable with the defiantly uncritical stands of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is expected to give President Obama a chilly welcome when he speaks to the AIPAC convention this weekend.
At the Knesset hearing condemning J Street, Israel's Likud leadership essentially rejected the idea that Jews outside Israel have the right to dissent.
As the Washington Post reported, "The new model [of J Street's conditional support for Israel] is considered treasonous by those in Israel who think the American Jewish community's role should be to back the Israeli government's decisions."
Now, with Netanyahu's public rebuke to Obama, the Likud leadership is showing that deviation from its policies won't be tolerated in the White House either.
Republican Attacks
Following Netanyahu's dressing-down of Obama, Republicans moved quickly to drive a wedge between Obama and Jewish voters.
Siding with Netanyahu on the issue of using the 1967 borders as a starting point for talks, GOP leaders accused Obama of "throwing Israel under the bus." Next week, Republicans on Capitol Hill plan to formally condemn Obama's position.
So, the political dynamic is now running parallel to the situation in 1980 when Prime Minister Begin was determined to rid Israel of President Carter, who was regarded as too friendly to the Palestinians and too supportive of a Palestinian state.
If Israel now is determined to annex the West Bank (as Likud parliamentarian Danon suggests), Netanyahu's government will face even a greater need to prevent Obama from gaining a second term.
A defiant Israel will have to place a high priority on replacing Obama with a Republican who would restore the kind of policy leeway that Israel enjoyed under President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush.
Much as Begin's government fretted about Carter winning a second term in 1980, the fear now will be that a second (and final) term for Obama would free him from the political pressures of the influential Jewish-American community and thus allow him to pressure Israel into making concessions for a Mideast peace.
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