But Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin said Israel had a moral obligation to recognise genocides of other people.
A Holocaust survivors' group backed the push to join France in recognisng what happened as genocide.
"The issue here is not and should not be political; this is a matter of deep conscience and moral imperative," said Elan Steinberg, vice-president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants
"Present day Turkey is not guilty of the murders committed by the Ottoman Empire a century ago, but it has a moral responsibility to confront its past honestly.
"As survivors ourselves, we more than others know that the recognition of the unspeakable historical suffering of the Armenians is the minimum that decency and morality demands from mankind".
