Israel Matzav

New British Foreign Secretary says he's 'a natural friend of Israel'

I looked around to find out where new British Foreign Secretary William Hague stands on Israel and I found this.

"The most urgent thing is the Iranian nuclear program," Hague said recently in an interview to the Jewish Chronicle. "We have consistently been the party arguing for tough sanctions and a strong European approach over the last few years and are very frustrated that that hasn’t emerged strongly enough.

"Unlike the Liberal Democrats, we don’t say you rule out for ever any military action. However, we are not calling for that. The way I usually put it is that Iran getting nuclear bomb may be a calamity, although military action may be calamitous. This is why we need peaceful pressure. But to simply take all military efforts off the table is reducing the pressure on Iran."

I'm going to skip the part about the use of British passport in the Mabhouh affair - allegedly by the Mossad - because I regard that as a short-term irritant and not as a long-term issue. The article also notes that Hague is in favor of changing England's universal jurisdiction law so that Israeli officials can visit freely - another issue I regard as peripheral. But then there's this:

"Yes, we are friends of Israel. We are concerned that if a two-state solution is not arrived at soon, then it will never be. And that that would not be in the long-term interests of Israel and that is why we want to see all parties involved being prepared to negotiate.

Hague stresses that he is a "natural friend" of Israel, but does not spare criticism against the Jewish state on the settlement construction issue. However, it appears that his criticism is not too critical.

"The recent announcement of a new project in east Jerusalem during a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden was not a great way to advance diplomatic relations. It was a mistake to make it public in that way although it was probably an accident in terms of the timing. These sorts of things can happen, particularly within coalition governments, but that's a great shame that it came out when it did," he said.

"There are things that we're asking of Israel, such as the freeze on settlement expansion, but there are also important things we ask of Palestinians. And we still have the issue of dealing with Hamas in Gaza, an organization that doesn't recognize Israel."

"So it's absolutely true that the pressure must be applied on all sides," he added. "Foreign Secretary David Miliband has often spoken about needing not a two-state solution but a 23-state solution of all the Arab states, and this is true."

Hague has visited Israel in the past and examined the security problems up close. "I've travelled across the country. I've stood on the Golan Heights and swam in the Sea of Galilee. I've stood on the part of the West Bank where you can see the Mediterranean, where you really understand Israel's strategic fragility. But we are candid friends, which means we don't always agree."

Hague understands why Israel undertook Operation Cast Lead, but he says that the Goldstone Report cannot be ignored. I'm leery of people who give any credibility to the Goldstone Report, because I've done a lot of work on proving it false.

And then there are Hague's views on the Second Lebanon War.

While Dr Fox’s doubts about the government’s policy in the war on terror and the Middle East remain private, William Hague has made his own explicit. In an extraordinary Commons speech last week, he announced that Hezbollah was only ‘partly’ responsible for the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, certain aspects of which he condemned robustly as ‘disproportionate’. The shadow foreign secretary chided the Prime Minister for being seen as ‘too close’ to President George W. Bush. Ironically, it was precisely the speech that Labour MPs wanted to hear from the hapless Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, who instead focused all her energies on avoiding a blunder.

That speech was made about a week after the Second Lebanon War started, and before Israel sent ground troops in.

On the whole, Hague's tone toward Israel seems to be an improvement over outgoing Foreign Secretary David Miliband. And according to a business contact in England who is a Conservative party activist, the Conservatives are much more pro-Israel than the Labour party. But the proof is in the pudding. We shall wait and we shall see.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:58 PM