Netanyahu meets Dayan as Brazil continues to drag feet on ambassador appointment

The meeting came five days after Dayan said in an interview that after three months waiting for the Brazilians to agree to the appointment , it was time to take a more aggressive stance.

By HERB KEINON
Updated: JANUARY 1, 2016 04:10
Dani Dayan. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Dani Dayan.
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes Dani Dayan will make an “exceptional ambassador” to Brasilia, and is awaiting a positive answer from the Brazilian government to his appointment, a government official said on Thursday following a meeting between the two men.
The meeting came five days after Dayan said in an interview that after three months waiting quietly and in vain for the Brazilians to agree to the appointment, it was time to take a more aggressive stance.
The prime minister announced Dayan’s appointment in August, but Brazil has refused to approve it, with the government there coming under pressure from Palestinians, and from far-left circles in Israel and Brazil, not to accept the appointment because Dayan lives in Ma’aleh Shomron – beyond the Green Line – and is the former head of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea and Samaria.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, Foreign Minister Dore Gold and Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser Jonathan Schachter met earlier in the week in the Prime Minister’s Office, but with neither Netanyahu nor Dayan present, to discuss what steps to take to move the appointment forward.
Following that meeting, Hotovely – who ascribed part of the delay to the fact that Brazil is experiencing a political crisis with President Dilma Rousseff is in the middle of impeachment proceedings – warned that a failure to approve Dayan would lead to a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
On Thursday, Hotovely told Army Radio that Israel was not willing to accept the precedent whereby ambassadorial candidates – supported across the political spectrum in Israel – would be rejected because of their ideological positions. She said that Netanyahu has asked to deal with the situation personally.
“In the end I think a solution will be found to this crisis,” she said.


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