Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Rick Perry’s New Best Friend

Now that Republican presidential wannabe Rick Perry has waded into the sticky-wicket of Middle East politics, it’s only fair to examine the influences on his thinking. After all, while Texas is a big state to govern, and he could probably see Mexico from the border, Perry doesn’t have much foreign policy experience, in the Mideast or elsewhere.

Not to worry. The governor has plenty of tutors. As Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev wrote after Perry’s press conference yesterday, the supposed GOP front-runner is sounding like a hard-line Likudnik with a southern twang.

And he’s following not just any Likudnik. Perry’s new BFF, it seems, who stood next to him at the press conference, who says he’ll usher him around Israel later this year, is deputy Knesset speaker Danny Danon.

Danon’s views aren’t a mystery — his website has a spritely English version. The latest entry, from Sunday, repeats the Danon plan to bring peace to his troubled region: not the two-state solution that even his party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, professes to support, but a three-state solution.

Rather than consider an independent Palestinian state now or in the future, Danon proposes that Israel assert what he calls “full sovereignty” over the West Bank — that means annexation — inviting Palestinians (though he calls them Arab-Israelis) to become citizens of Israel. “The remaining enclaves of Palestinian towns and villages in Judea and Samaria would become part of either Egypt or Jordan, and the Egyptian and Jordanian borders would extend accordingly to these designated towns,” he writes.

And how exactly is this supposed to work? Has MK Danon seen a map of the West Bank recently? Jewish settlements are so interspersed with Palestinian towns and villages that the shape of these new borders would make the worst congressional districting plan look positively orderly by comparison.

To his credit, Perry said at the press conference that he endorsed a two-state solution, which reportedly dismayed Danon. But only a little bit. “If you look at the overall picture, we share the same values and principles,” Danon said.

Glad he cleared that up.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.