Settler leader heads to DC to shadow Netanyahu

Dani Dayan wants to remind Netanyahu not to make irrevocable concessions that could endanger Israel’s future.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was not the only Israeli leader who left on Tuesday for Washington. He is being joined there by the chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, Dani Dayan.
Dayan told The Jerusalem Post during a stopover in London that the goals of his trip were to follow what was happening in Washington up close, to give interviews to American and international television networks, and to remind Netanyahu not to make irrevocable concessions that could endanger Israel’s future.
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“I am concerned about what Netanyahu has not been saying lately,” Dayan said. “He hasn’t said for at least a year that Jerusalem would not be divided, that Jews won’t be expelled from their homes, or that we won’t go back to pre- 1967 borders.”
Dayan noted that the last time a chairman of the settlers’ council came to the US during peace talks, Netanyahu was prime minister and Pinhas Wallerstein came to the negotiations at Wye Plantation.
Wallerstein’s reports to National Religious Party MK Hanan Porat ultimately led to the collapse of Netanyahu’s coalition.
The main messages that Dayan said he would seek to get across to Americans were that the Palestinians were still trying to destroy Israel, that a Palestinian state would endanger both Israel and the US, and that since Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s term ends in January, he no longer represents anyone.
Dayan warned Netanyahu that US President Barack Obama’s “mistaken and hostile attitude to Israel policies” would return after the midterm American elections in November.
“The charm offensive will end, the bad Obama will come back, and we will have to deal with it,” Dayan said.
In another effort to pressure Netanyahu, a dozen ministers and MKs from his coalition, led by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, will tour schools in Judea and Samaria on Wednesday, the first day of school, and call for an end to the West Bank construction moratorium.
The tours are an initiative of the Knesset’s Land of Israel caucus.
Likud hawk Danny Danon will hold a rally of Likud Central Committee members against the freeze on Wednesday night in Ariel, during which he will unveil a large clock that will count down to the end of the freeze.
“On September 26, we will start the engines on bulldozers throughout Judea and Samaria and resume building the national Jewish state in our historic homeland. I call on the prime minister to join us on this historic occasion,”Danon said.
Meanwhile, Meretz MK Ilan Gilon wrote to Netanyahu “Come back following positive steps starting talks, continuing the freeze and starting the new year on the right foot. You know how to make peace and you have the ability to make peace, but it’s your choice whether to accomplish this goal.”