Israel should annex Judea and Samaria and put an end to the Palestinian Authority’s “salami system” of taking land, according to government coalition leader Ze’ev Elkin, a Likud Knesset Member.

“For the past twenty years we have been discussing what we should give and why. The time has come for a completely different discussion. It is our right and it is our land. It is our right to apply sovereignty over it”, says Elkin in his pre-recorded greeting to the participants of the Second Conference for the Application of Israeli Sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. The conference is scheduled to be held Thursday in Hevron, under the auspices of Women in Green and "Just Peace For Israel.”

“Now is the time to do so in Judea and Samaria. It is time to end this ‘salami system’, where the Palestinians take and take as we cut away and give them slice by slice,” MK Elkin declared.

He said that fear of international criticism is unfounded because Israel has maintained its sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights for more than 30 years despite international condemnation. Mainstream media still dateline articles in the areas as “occupied” territory.

Elkin’s comments come less than a week after a panel headed by retired High Court judge Edmund Levy concluded that there is no “occupation” in Judea and Samaria, and international law allows Jews to live in Judea and Samaria.

The idea of Jews having a legal right to live in Judea and Samaria sent shudders through mainstream media, which initially buried the report for several days, leaving Arutz Sheva as almost the lone media outlet to publish it immediately.

Voice of Israel government radio was quick to feature on Monday Talia Sasson, former head of the State Prosecution Criminal Department. She rejected Levy’s report and said it contradicts High Court rulings.

Sasson authored a 2005 report that has served as the basis for declaring dozens of Jewish communities and outposts “illegal.” Her report was commissioned by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who also engineered the “Disengagement" program to expel more than 9,000 Jews from their homes, all of them legally built, in Gaza and in four northern Samaria communities in 2005.

Sasson later ran in Israeli elections as a member of the left wing Meretz party. (IsraelNationalNews © 2012 07/09/12)