Off the wire
• Philippine university suspends classes due to bomb scare  • Maserati recalls 20,842 defective vehicles in China  • Major news items in leading Ethiopian media outlets on Monday  • Foreign exchange rates in Singapore  • Major news items in leading Nigerian media outlets on Monday  • 1st LD-Writethru: Chinese shares close lower Monday  • Kenya's Kamworor plots to double at Olympics, launches season in Shanghai  • Kenya's Jepchirchir sets focus on winning Yangzhou Half Marathon in China  • Casillas drops biggest hint yet over international retirement  • Security forces flush out Al-Shabaab, kill 115 in central Somalia  
You are here: 　 Home

Israel backs down on naming settler as envoy to Brazil

Xinhua, March 28, 2016 Adjust font size:

Israel had officially backed out of its intention to send a settler as its ambassador to Brazil, amid Brasilia's objection, the Israeli Prime Minister's Office revealed on Monday.

A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office on Monday said that Danni Dayan, a former head of a settlers group and a settler himself, will be appointed instead as the Israeli consul general in New York.

Netanyahu appointed Dayan, his close associate, to replace the outgoing Israeli ambassador to Brazil, back in August, and the Israeli government approved the nomination in September.

The nomination faced harsh criticism from Brazil which refused to accept an avid settler who supports the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. The Jewish settlements are considered illegal by the international community.

"Dayan is a leader of a policy condemned by the United Nations, and as such, it would go against Brazil's interests and world peace to allow him to became an ambassador here," Brazil's Defense Minister Celso Amorim told U.S. National Public Radio in December, in one of many Brazilian officials' public comments against the nomination.

In January, upset by the Brazilian demands for a different nominee, Netanyahu said there will be no other candidate that would replace Dayan, leaving the country without an Israeli envoy. "I believe that Dani Dayan is an exceptionally qualified candidate, and he remains my candidate," Netanyahu said then.

The latest diplomatic row between Brazil and Israel took place in late July 2014, when Brazil criticized Israel for its military operation in the Gaza Strip, in which more than 2,200 Palestinians and 70 Israelis were killed.

Brazil then condemned the "disproportionate use of force by Israel in the Gaza Strip, from which large numbers of civilian casualties, including women and children, resulted," and temporarily recalled its ambassador to Tel Aviv.

Israeli diplomats responded by reportedly calling Brazil a "diplomatic dwarf." Israeli President Reuven Rivlin apologized for the comments in a conversation with Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff. Endit