JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday dismissed warnings by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that Israel could be targeted by a growing boycott campaign if peace talks with the Palestinians fail.
Netanyahu tried to reassure Israelis, while two government ministers accused Kerry of unfair pressure tactics and not standing by Israel.
“Attempts to impose a boycott on the State of Israel are immoral and unjust,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday at its weekly meeting in Jerusalem, according to a text message from his office. The boycott won’t succeed because it will encourage the Palestinians “to adhere to their intransigent positions and thus push peace further away,” he said.
Kerry’s comments and the Israeli response led the main Israeli TV news shows Sunday, signaling a growing concern that the world will use economic pressure to extract concessions.
It is the second time in less than a month that Israeli ministers have disagreed publicly with Kerry.
In January, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was forced to apologize to Kerry after he was quoted deriding Kerry’s peacemaking mission as “messianic.”
A Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, launched in 2005, was long considered by Israel as a minor nuisance. However, recent warnings by Europe and by Israel’s finance minister about potential damage from a widening boycott have raised the level of concern.
At the same time, a small but growing number of European businesses and pension funds cut ties with Israeli firms linked to settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, war-won lands the Palestinians want for a state. Over the weekend, Denmark’s largest bank, Danske Bank, blacklisted Israel’s Bank Hapoalim because of links to settlement activity.
Actress Scarlett Johansson publicly split with Oxfam last week after the United Kingdom-based charity criticized her role as a celebrity spokesman for SodaStream, which has a factory next to the West Bank settlement Maaleh Adumim outside Jerusalem.
Norway’s sovereign oil fund last week renewed an investment ban on two Israeli construction companies that build in the West Bank, Africa Israel Investments Ltd. and Danya Cebus Ltd.
Kerry is expected to present a framework for a peace deal in coming weeks. Anticipating resistance from Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, he has spelled out the risks if they say no to his plan.
Israel won’t be able to preserve its future as a democratic, majority-Jewish state and will endanger its prosperity, while the Palestinians will inadvertently embolden hard-liners, Kerry warned last month in an apparent attempt to appeal directly to public opinion on both sides.
On Saturday, at a security conference in Germany, he sent a tougher message to the Israelis.
“You see for Israel there’s an increasing de-legitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it. There are talk of boycotts and other kinds of things,” Kerry said. “Today’s status quo absolutely, to a certainty, I promise you 100 percent, cannot be maintained. It’s not sustainable. It’s illusionary.”
Israeli public opinion toward a peace deal has changed over the years, with polls suggesting more Israelis now support the establishment of a Palestinian state, but are also increasingly suspicious of Palestinian intentions and skeptical that an agreement can be struck and implemented. With the economy robust and the security situation stable, the government hasn’t faced widespread public pressure to compromise.
This could change, said analyst Nadav Eyal.
“Israel has performed an economic miracle in the past 30 years,” Eyal wrote Sunday in the Maariv daily. “In a reality of globalization, however, this miracle is completely linked to the reciprocal relations between Israel and the Western world. But success, any success, has a permanent weakness: What’s given can also be taken back.”
“The hammer John Kerry is swinging may sound weak at first, but its pounding will only get louder,” he added.
The fallout from Kerry’s latest comments led the main TV news broadcasts Sunday evening. “Advice from a worried friend or a veiled threat?” asked the anchor on Channel Two.
For hard-liners in Netanyahu’s center-right coalition, the answer was clear.
Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz of Netanyahu’s Likud party said Israel can’t be expected “to conduct negotiations with a gun pointed to its head,” calling Kerry’s comments offensive.
Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, from the religious, pro-settler Jewish Home party, suggested Kerry was siding with Israel’s foes. “We expect our friends around the world to stand beside us, against anti-Semitic boycott efforts targeting Israel, and not for them to be their amplifier,” said Bennett.
But Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who is leading her country’s negotiations with the Palestinians defended Kerry. “You have to make a distinction between threats and concern,” Livni said on Army Radio.
Soon after the Israeli remarks were broadcast, Jen Psaki, a State Department spokesman, issued a statement.
“Secretary Kerry has a proud record of over three decades of steadfast support for Israel’s security and well-being, including staunch opposition to boycotts,” she said, adding: “At the Munich Security Conference yesterday, he spoke forcefully in defense of Israel’s interests, as he consistently has throughout his public life.
In response to a question about the peace process, he also described some well-known and previously stated facts about what is at stake for both sides if this process fails, including the consequences for the Palestinians. His only reference to a boycott was a description of actions undertaken by others that he has always opposed.”
Tensions between the U.S. and Israel, traditionally close allies, have mounted ahead of Kerry’s anticipated framework proposal, which is to buy time for extending the talks beyond an end-of-April target date for a deal.
Kerry is to present the proposals in coming weeks and has hinted at some of his ideas in recent speeches.
Israel’s 1967 frontier, before it captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, would likely be a reference point for drawing the border of a future Palestine, though land swaps would allow Israel to keep some of the dozens of settlements it has built on occupied lands. The Palestinians, in turn, would have to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.
Six months into the talks, Abbas has proposed to Kerry that a U.S.-led NATO force patrol a future Palestinian state indefinitely, with troops positioned throughout the territory, at all crossings, and within Jerusalem.
Abbas said in an interview with The New York Times at his headquarters in the West Bank over the weekend that Israeli soldiers could remain in the West Bank for up to five years - not three, as he previously stated - and that Jewish settlements should be phased out of the new Palestinian state along a similar timetable.
Palestine, he said, would not have its own army, only a police force, so the NATO mission would be responsible for preventing the weapons smuggling and terrorism that Israel fears.
“For a long time, and wherever they want, not only on the eastern borders, but also on the western borders, everywhere,” Abbas said of the imagined NATO mission. “The third party can stay. They can stay to reassure the Israelis, and to protect us.”
Netanyahu has rejected the 1967 lines as a starting point in the past, while Abbas has said he won’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
It’s not clear how they will respond when Kerry presents his plan. U.S. officials have said the two sides could express reservations, but not to an extent that would make the framework devoid of meaning.
In the Times interview, Abbas also distanced himself somewhat from Kerry’s framework, saying, “He has the right to do whatever he wants, and at the end we have the right to say whatever we want.” Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub and Ian Deitch of The Associated Press; by Calev Ben-David of Bloomberg News; and by Isabel Kershner and Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/03/2014