Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Danny Danon joined me on HuffPost Live Thursday for a discussion about his new book, Israel: The Will To Prevail, in which he advocates for Israel to annex all the Jewish-occupied and uninhabited land in the West Bank to its Arab neighbors, and for Israel to be unafraid to act unilaterally.
"Israel must take decisions that are good to Israel," he said when asked about the country's increasingly isolated existence within the region, from Europe and within the international community. "We must not try to satisfy anyone else, including our closest ally the United States of America."
Danon also denied that Israel is in Gaza, despite Israel's ongoing aerial, land and sea blockade on Gaza and its control over the movement of goods, people, water and electricity in the region.
"Today we are not in Gaza anymore," he said.
Danon evaded several questions about United Nations, Human Rights Watch and the United States calling Israel's expansion and continued building of settlements violation of international law — what Obama himself called "illegitimate."
"The long-term vision is to apply Jewish sovereignty over the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria, and I am proud of it," he responded instead.
I asked Danon about Shlomo Gazit, who fought in the War of Independence and spent another 32 years in the Israel Defense Forces as a career soldier and wrote in Haaretz last year:
"In the present situation, unfortunately, there is no equal treatment for Jews and Arabs when it comes to law enforcement. The legal system that enforces the law in a discriminatory way on the basis of national identity, is actually maintaining an apartheid regime."
Danon dismissed the general as a lone voice.
"We have rights to the land," he told me. "Judea and Samaria. You call that occupied territories, Ahmed, I call it my homeland Judea and Samaria."
We were joined by Anav Silverman, a writer and high school teacher based in Jerusalem; David Kaufman, a writer and HuffPost Blogger in New York; Elizabeth Lauten, a former Capitol Hill Press Secretary who joins us from Alexandria, VA; and Noura Erakat, a Palestinian-American lawyer and activist and also a Friedman Fellow at the Temple University School of Law for a lengthy discussion about the issues.
Watch the full segment below: