MK Akunis
MK AkunisFlash 90

Deputy Minister MK Ofir Akunis (Likud-Beytenu) toured the Jordan Valley Tuesday and warned against plans to cede the strategic territory to the Palestinian Authority as part of a “peace deal.”

"Unfortunately, Israel does not have much strategic depth,” he said. “This is what we have. If, G-d forbid, the IDF and the settlers will not be here, as our friends the Americans want, this plan could endanger the entire state of Israel.”

Akunis added: “The Jordan Valley is Israel's iron wall, and only the presence of the IDF and the settlers of the Valley, will guarantee the security of the citizens of Israel. Whoever cedes the Jordan Valley, will abandon Israel's security.”

The “Iron Wall” is a phrase famously used by nationalist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who established the revisionist movement, which eventually turned into the Herut party, and later – Likud. In a 1923 article, he argued that Palestinian Arabs would never agree to a Jewish majority in Palestine, and that the Jewish settlement enterprise “can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach."

The only solution to achieve peace and a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, he argued, would be for Jews to unilaterally decide its borders and defend them with the strongest security possible.