Loosing the href value while .clone() & while doing .empty() help needed #javascript #jQuery

Loosing the href value while .clone() & while doing .empty() help needed #javascript #jQuery

HTML:

<ul class="SegmentCommandsMenu">
<li class="segmentCommandReserve" style="display: list-item;">
     <a href="javascript:openReservationPopup(4299,0,720)"> 
   <img src="/QFlow/Images/Calendar/reserve.png" border="0" alt="Reserve">Reserve</a>
</li>
</ul>

Jquery: 

var el = $('li.segmentCommandReserve').clone();  - this returns the value but the href is ""

but then i tried to do set the value of href by doing the below:

el.find('a').attr('href',$('li.segmentCommandReserve').find('a').attr('href'));

but when i do the below the value of the href if 'el ' is set back to ""

$('ul.SegmentCommandsMenu').html(''); or  
$('ul.SegmentCommandsMenu').empty();

then i do this to get the element appended to the 

$('ul.SegmentCommandsMenu').append(el);

Please help me to get this right . am i doing it wrong?