France over the weekend called on Israel to recognize a Palestinian state if ongoing peace-making efforts orchestrated by Paris end in failure.
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“In the coming weeks, France will take… steps in order to organise an worldwide conference gathering each of the parties’ principle partners – principally Americans, Europeans and Arabs – in order to preserve and to bring about the two-state solution”, he said in remarks to diplomats.
At his weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, Netanyahu said such a move by the French “will be an incentive for the Palestinians to come and not compromise”.
If this attempt faced a deadlock, Fabius said, France would have to recognise a Palestinian state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the French proposal for an global peace conference as a non-starter.
“It is the same PA that “stands behind the incitement that stokes the terrorist attacks”, Netanyahu said, adding that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not even condemn the attack carried out by one of his men”. Earlier on Friday, at United Nations headquarters in New York, Mansour said the nuclear talks on Iran and talks on Syria, Yemen and Libya have spurred the Palestinians to seek a broader global framework to try to settle the decades-old conflict with Israel.
The expansions of settlements by Israel since then have been described by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as “provocative acts” that raise questions about its commitment to a two-state solution. Ban angered Israel by saying last week that it is “human nature to react to occupation”.
At the same time, 160 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, most while carrying out attacks but others during clashes and demonstrations.
Israeli security forces standing by the body of a Palestinian who opened fire on Israeli soldiers near the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank before being shot dead, January 31, 2016.
The Israeli military told Anadolu Agency that only Ramallah residents and humanitarian workers would be allowed to enter the city, which functions as the West Bank’s administrative capital.
The Palestinian had infiltrated a security fence near the Israeli settlement Salit, the military said.
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The Islamist militant Hamas movement on Sunday raised the prospect of exchanging an Israeli soldier declared dead in the territory’s 2014 war in return for Palestinian prisoners. “You were first and I am following you”, the Beit El assailant, Amjad Abu Omar, wrote on Facebook.
