Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Saturday welcomed the call by hundreds of Iraqi leaders and activists for full normalization with Israel.
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According to French news agency AFP, over 300 Iraqis officials, including tribal leaders holding a conference in autonomous Kurdistan on Friday, called for the normalization of ties with the Jewish state, drawing strong criticism from Baghdad, which officially is in a state of war with Jerusalem.
Bennett said Saturday night that "Israel extends its hand back in peace" to nations in the Middle East, a statement by the Prime Minister's Office said.
"Hundreds of Iraqi public figures, Sunnis and Shiites, gathered yesterday [Friday] to call for peace with Israel This is a call that comes from below and not from above, from the people and not from the government, and the recognition of the historical injustice done to the Jews of Iraq is especially important.
"The State of Israel extends its hand back in peace," he said.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said issued a statement saying, "The event in Iraq is a source of hope and optimism. Israel is always searching for ways to widen the circle of peace and we are working with friends across the world to make that happen.
"Normalization benefits the entire region and helps us move away from the extremism and chaos offered by negative actors towards stability, prosperity, moderation and cooperation.
"The Jewish people share a deep historical connection to Iraq. So to the Iraqi people we say today – we have far more that unites us than divides us and far more to gain from peace than from unnecessary conflict."
The New York-based Center for Peace Communications, which organized the event in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, advocates for normalizing relations between Israel and Arab countries.
The initiative was a first of its kind in Iraq. It saw 312 Iraqi leaders and activists, both Sunni and Shiites, publicly call for full normalization with Israel, saying that the next step would be to seek "face-to-face talks" with Israelis.
CPC founder Joseph Braude, a US citizen of Iraqi Jewish origin, told AFP that participants at the conference came from across Iraq and included "Sunni and Shiite representatives from six governorates: Baghdad, Mosul, Salaheddin, Al-Anbar, Diyala and Babylon," extending to tribal chiefs and "intellectuals and writers."
Other speakers at the conference included Chemi Peres, head of an Israeli foundation established by his father, the late president Shimon Peres.
"Normalization with Israel is now a necessity," said Sheikh Rissan al-Halboussi, an official from the Anbar Province, citing the examples of Morocco and the UAE.
Reading the closing statement of the conference, Sahar al-Tai, head of research at the Iraqi federal government's culture ministry, said, "We demand our integration into the Abraham Accords. Just as these agreements provide for diplomatic relations between the signatories and Israel, we also want normal relations with Israel.
"No force, local or foreign, has the right to prevent this call," she stressed.
Another official said that the group called for peace with Israel "so that we might live in a stable region that brings conflicts to an end. We believe in it because we want our region to be a peaceful one, in which Israel is an inseparable part of the panoramic whole, and in which all peoples have the right to live in security."
In a piece published by The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Wisam al-Hardan, leader of the Sons of Iraq Awakening movement, wrote, "We demand that Iraq join the Abraham Accords internationally. We call for full diplomatic relations with Israel and a new policy of mutual development and prosperity."
Calling the expulsion of Iraq's Jews "the most infamous act" in the country's decline, Hardan said Iraq "must reconnect with the whole of our diaspora, including these Jews."
He added the group "reject[s] the hypocrisy in some quarters of Iraq that speaks kindly of Iraqi Jews while denigrating their Israeli citizenship, and the Jewish state, which granted them asylum," further calling Iraqi laws criminalizing contacts with Israelis are "morally repugnant."
"We have a choice: tyranny and chaos, or legality, decency, peace and progress," he wrote. "The answer is clear."
On Saturday, Iraq's federal government rejected the conference's call for normalization and condemned participants for holding what it called "an illegal meeting."
The conference "was not representative of the population's [opinion] and that of residents in Iraqi cities, in whose name these individuals purported to speak," the statement said.
Iraqi President Barham Saleh, a Kurd, also condemned the conference.
According to the Times of Israel, several Iraqi MPs urged the government to "arrest all the participants," who "are raitors in the eyes of the law."
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Iraq has officially been at war with Israel since its inception in 1948, even sending Iraqi troops to fights alongside Arab states in three wars against Israel.
Various Kurdish Iraqi leaders have visited Israel several times over the years, and Jerusalem has expressed support for the s2017 independence referendum in the autonomous region.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
