Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer speaking at the Israeli American Council gala on March 9. Photo: Pal Photography.

JNS.org – Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer said at the sixth annual Israeli American Council (IAC) gala that the people of Israel “don’t want a piece of paper” out of the current U.S.-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians, but want “a real peace, and genuine peace, a peace that’s based on mutual recognition.”

“Palestinians ask the Israeli government, the Israeli people, to recognize a Palestinian state. Well, the Palestinians are going to have to recognize the Jewish state of Israel,” Dermer said March 9 in Beverly Hills, Calif. The ambassador’s remarks come after Nabil Elaraby, the head of the Arab League, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas both came out against Jewish state recognition in recent comments.

Dermer, a longtime advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Netanyahu “is not going to allow Iran’s regime to develop nuclear weapons.”

The gala raised more than $2.5 million for the IAC, an umbrella organization for the more than half a million Israeli expats and their children living in the U.S. The IAC says it works “to build an active and giving Israeli-American community in order to strengthen the state of Israel, the Jewish identity of the next generation, and to provide a bridge to the Jewish-American community.”