Hamas a danger to Middle East, consul warns

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Wednesday, March 22, 2006 | 7:09 a.m.

Ehud Danoch, Israel's consul general in Los Angeles, gave a blow-by-blow recounting of recent events in his country while not exactly answering the question that formed the title of his talk, "What's Next for Israel and the Middle East?"

Or perhaps the answer was in his tongue-in-cheek comment at the beginning of the talk on Tuesday at the Venetian: "We have had, for the last 58 years, probably every Israeli official say, 'These are challenging moments.' "

Danoch, who was chief of staff to Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Silvan Shalom, tried "to connect the dots together in order to get a brighter picture" of the impact that the militant Hamas party's election to the Palestinian legislature will have on Israel and the surrounding region.

Those effects include an impasse in Israeli-Palestinian relations that Danoch sees as difficult to overcome, given that Hamas has pledged to ignore all previous agreements between the two sides and calls in its charter for "the annihilation of all Jews."

The newfound prominence given the group - identified by the State Department as terrorist - will help foster cooperation with other such groups in the Middle East, he warned.

That, he added, will "not only affect Israel but the entire region."

Danoch also highlighted what he called "the real threat" in the Middle East - Iran's potential capability for developing nuclear weapons.

"None of us would want to see an extremist government holding nuclear capabilities," he said.

Although Tuesday's talk came only eight days from Israeli elections, it drew only nine people - underlining the challenges that the Las Vegas World Affairs Council, the sponsoring group, faces when trying to bring world experts to a place where the world comes to party.

Still, Benjamin Duchek, founder of the organization nearing its second birthday, said he will persist in his effort to schedule events for the public to gain access to "visiting dignitaries."

One person at Tuesday's event asked Danoch's thoughts about what direction U.S. foreign policy should take before the Palestinian Authority.

Danoch said it is difficult for one nation to deal with another that chooses to ignore written agreements about issues such as borders and sovereignty when a new party comes to power.

"This is not the way the free world behaves," he said. "This is not the way international law functions."