Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev likely to become Israel’s ambassador in Britain

According to the Times story, “The naming of Danny Danon as the new ambassador is the latest in a string of appointments by Mr. Netanyahu that indicate he will not bow to mounting worldwide criticism and efforts to isolate Israel”.

Danon accepted the “important challenge that I offered him”, Netanyahu said on Friday in an e-mailed statement from his office in Jerusalem.

Since first entering the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in 2009, Danon has steadily climbed the ranks within the Likud party, now placed at no. 9 on the party list.

Danon thanked the prime minister, saying, “I will do everything possible to promote Israel’s positions to the world”.

PM Netanyauhu has appointed Danny Danon the Israeli ambassador to the UN. Though the man whom Danon is to succeed, Ron Prosor, is a seasoned diplomat who has done as well as any Israeli representative can do at the UN, perhaps the prime minister is now ready to inflict the nuisance that has interfered in his government on the global body.

The Israeli opposition criticized Netanyahu’s decision to bring Danon back into a position of prominence, calling it a desperate move to solidify loyalty within his increasingly hawkish base.

An insistent opponent of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Danon nonetheless promised to put such views aside and instead champion Netanyahu’s.

“It is hard to conceive of a more short-sighted, shameful and damaging appointment than that of the Likud hawk as United Nations envoy”, he wrote. Does he want Europe to bring sanctions not just on West Bank entities but on Israel itself?

In the past, the U.S. has made it clear that it would veto Palestinian statehood measures at the United Nations, insisting that statehood should be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian government.