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“We must bring back hope, recreate an worldwide atmosphere that is favourable to a (peace) process”, says French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. The last round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians took place between July 2013 and April 2014 with the mediation of the USA, and ended abruptly without results.
“As long as we are in the government, there will be no Palestinian state, there will be no settlement evacuations and we will not give any land to our enemies”, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said on Tuesday, quoted in Israeli media.
While attention has shifted to unrest in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, there has been a surge of violence since October that has claimed the lives of 205 Palestinians and 28 Israelis.
According to French diplomatic sources, the fresh peace push would centre on the 2002 Saudi peace initiative.
It includes the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, a just solution for refugees, full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights and occupied Lebanese territories in return for normalising relations with Arab countries.
But the French peace plan faces multiple obstacles, with the two sides trading blame even before the proposed talks get off the ground.
Neither Israel, which has opposed the gathering, nor the Palestinians, who have welcomed it, have been invited.
Only two days before a Middle East peace summit in Paris, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Wednesday to keep East Jerusalem under Israeli control “for eternity”.
Over 200 Palestinians and almost 30 Israelis have been killed since the beginning of unrest across the occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel in October.
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Netanyahu may quickly find the decision to go along backfiring, as with the historic moderate-right getting chased out of Likud, Netanyahu is finding himself with coalition partners that all view him as “too moderate” as well.
