ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BILL AGAIN ON ISRAEL PARLIAMENT AGENDA

Asbarez
Apr 28th, 2010
JERUSALEM

Israel’s parliament agreed on Wednesday to again consider a draft
resolution recognizing the World War One-era mass killings and
deportations of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide.

The Knesset decided by 12 votes to 8, with one abstention, that one
of its standing committees will discuss the resolution and determine
whether it should be put to a full parliament vote.

Speaker Reuven Rivlin was among those who voted for the decision.

Significantly, a representative of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu also backed a parliament debate on the bill drafted by Haim
Oron, the leader of the left-wing opposition Meretz party.

Oron wants the committee to approve the draft resolution, arguing that
similar bills have been passed by committees in the French parliament
and US Congress."It is appropriate that the Israeli Knesset, which
represents the Jewish people, recognize the Armenian genocide,"
said Oron. "It is unacceptable that the Jewish people is not making
itself heard."

Most of the lawmakers voting against its inclusion on the parliament
agenda were from the Yisrael Beiteinu party, a junior partner in
Netanyahu’s coalition government that mainly represents Jewish
immigrants from Soviet republics and Azerbaijan in particular. One
of them, the Baku-born Yosef Shagal, said Israel should not pass
judgment on what he described as a Turkish-Armenian dispute.

It is not yet clear which Knesset committee will pick up the measure.

Oron wants it to be debated by the Education Committee, having failed
to push similar bills through the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
in 2009 and 2008. But both Rivlin and Netanyahu’s representative said
that the latter panel should again deal with the matter.

The Defense Committee did not even vote on the Armenian genocide
resolutions in the past, despite clearance from the Knesset. It thus
highlighted successive Israeli governments’ reluctance to antagonize
Turkey, a rare Muslim partner of the Jewish state.

The Netanyahu government did not back a parliament debate on Armenian
genocide recognition on the previous occasion, in May 2009.

Commentators might link the apparent shift in its position on the
highly sensitive issue to recent months’ worsening of Turkish-Israeli
relations.