ISRAEL PARLIAMENT REJECTS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION BILL

Agence France Presse — English
March 14, 2007 Wednesday 2:55 PM GMT

Israel’s parliament on Wednesday rejected a motion recognising the
Turkish mass killings of Armenians dating back to 1915 as a genocide.

"Stop ignoring and rejecting the catastrophe of another people," MP
Haim Oron, who submitted the motion, told the plenum before the vote.

"We refuse to accept the turning of a blind eye to the Armenian
genocide," the opposition left-wing Meretz party MP said.

"We owe this vote not only to the Armenian people, we owe it to
ourselves, especially in a period where we are struggling to prolong
the memory" of the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews during World
War II.

The motion was nevertheless rejected by parliament in a vote of 16
against 12, with a low turnout by MPs. It would have needed a second
ratification if it had passed.

The issue of the Armenian massacre has been raised several times in
the past in Israel’s Knesset, but there has never been an implicit
vote branding it as genocide.

If approved, Israel would have joined a growing list of countries
which have recognised the killings as genocide. It would have marked
April 24, the day when the massacres started in 1915, as Armenian
genocide memorial day.

Israel has close diplomatic ties with Turkey — one of the few Muslim
countries with which it has relations — and has in the past steered
clear of the recognition issue.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen died in orchestrated
killings during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

But the Turkish government strongly denies this, saying 300,000
Armenians and as many Turks were killed in civil conflict when the
Christian Armenians, backed by Russia, rose up against the Ottoman
Empire.

Oron told AFP he had been under heavy pressure from Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert’s office and the foreign ministry to withdraw
his motion.

"I have been under a lot of pressure, but that is something any
MP must face," Oron said. "Turkey has been exerting its pressure
everywhere. This is their right. But they can not set the agenda of
the Israeli parliament."

Government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said that Israel "did not intend to
place itself at the forefront of this issue, which is being handled
by the international community."