Israeli Consul-General Siegel says Israel hopes Abbas will reverse his U-turn and return to the negotiations

 

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — David Siegel, Israel’s Consul-General in Los Angeles, said Thursday, May 1, that his government is still hopeful that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority “will reevaluate their position and come back to the negotiating table and move away from Hamas.”

While the “ball is in their (Palestinians’) court,” Siegel said that Israel and the United States are not simply passive bystanders to whatever the Palestinian Authority may decide on the question of resuming the Middle East Peace Process.

“We hope that there will be enough pressure in the international system on the Palestinian leadership to move away from their latest U-turn and reverse it,” Siegel told San Diego Jewish World in a telephone interview before he met Thursday evening with the leadership of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County.

Before the Palestinians announced their plan for reconciliation, said Siegel, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and “presented the American framework and things were fairly well understood between the sides and then he was to go to Ramallah (the Palestinian Authority’s capital), when he was told not to come and the next day we all woke up and were tremendously surprised by the Palestinian Authority’s decision to go with Hamas.”

Currently, he said, the Israeli government is “reassessing — everyone is reassessing.”

Siegel said he does not believe Hamas would renounce terrorism, honor the Palestinian Authority’s previous agreements with Israel, nor recognize Israel’s right to resist, “so there is nothing to talk to them about.”

He said “there are very real issues about the status of Hamas, about the fact that they are still involved in terrorism whether it be rocket firings, attempted suicide bombings, infiltration of the border, digging tunnels to harm our soldiers, setting up terrorist cells on the West Bank that our security services have to foil day in and day out–so this is a very real thing, not academic.”

Israel’s only possible partner in a peace process is the Palestinian Authority, assuming it jettisons the announced agreement with Hamas that supposedly will culminate in a new Palestinian government within five weeks of the announcement, Siegel said.

Asked why he thought Abbas decided to announce a deal with Hamas at this time, Siegel responded “I think that there is a pattern here, a pattern that when you are within reach of a decision, there tends to be a decision on the Palestinian side at the last minute not to engage, and we have seen this repeatedly over the years.

“They either threaten to go to the United Nations and abandon the talks, or to dissolve themselves, or to reconnect with Hamas. We hope that this is not something that is permanent. There is time to reverse it before it is too late.”

Earlier on Thursday, Netanyahu had announced in Israel that he planned to seek to enshrine the statement that Israel is a Jewish state into the Basic Law of Israel.

Asked what the practical effect of this would be, Siegel responded: “Well one of the expectations that we had is that the Palestinian negotiator accept Israel’s right to define itself as the state of the Jewish people. With this move to Hamas which calls for the destruction of Israel– let alone not recognizing Israel as a Jewish state — and the international climate around this issue of the Jewish state which is certainly enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, we believe that this is a very important issue. In fact, a majority of the Israeli population believes that. Now there are politics involved and there will be domestic political moves, but Israel’s position is very clear that we are and we have the full right to define ourselves as the nation state of the Jewish people.”

Siegel was asked if he anticipated Israel would talke any steps that might also change the political landscape. He responded: “I think you are seeing a government that is conducting itself in a very wise manner and doing it in close coordination with the United States.”

The consul general said that in addition to discussing the Middle East Peace Process with the Jewish Federation leadership he planned to stress that the “Iranian nuclear threat is still very much front and center.”

“We are very supportive of a diplomatic deal but it needs to be a good deal that guarantees that Iran will not become a nuclear weapons power,” he stressed.

He added that “Iran’s role as a terrorist sponsor in the region and globally is very much uppermost in our minds. Over Passover there was yet another attempt to kill Israeli tourists in Thailand; that attempt was thwarted, so that is a big issue. The fact that the State Department came out with another global terrorim report yesterday (April 30) focusing on Iran shows it  is something that we should all be very concerned about.”

Siegel also had upbeat news to discuss, specifically the “very exciting issue off the new Israel-California Strategic Agreement that was signed when Prime Minister Netanyahu was here (in California) with Governor (Jerry) Brown and that agreement relates to very critical issues including water and the drought in California, and climate change issues, alternative energy and security.

“All of these issues Israel is a global leader on and this opportunity of joining our two economies –two of the most innovative economies in the world, California and Israel — to create more opportunities jobs and technologies is very important.”

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com