According to the Israel Defense Forces, the woman tried to attack the soldiers who were stationed at a pillbox-style guard post near the Einav settlement, northwest of the Palestinian city of Nablus.
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French President Francois Hollande opened the Paris peace summit this morning by saying that discord in the rest of the Middle East is not a reason to “abandon the Israeli-Palestinian issue”.
While scepticism over the new peace bid is high, the consensus among some diplomats appears to be that any effort is better than none at all.
After decades of failed negotiations, few believe the climate is right to bring together Israelis and Palestinians for another shot at solving one of the world’s longest-running conflicts.
Direct negotiation “doesn’t work”, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault insisted Friday.
Negotiations have been at a complete standstill since the collapse of a US-led initiative in April 2014.
The meeting will take place without the Israelis and Palestinians in attendance.
“We’re not bringing any specific proposals to this meeting tomorrow”, a senior State Department official said.
Israel though is fiercely opposed to the French initiative.
It warned that the status quo – a lack of headway toward a Palestinian state in territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war – was not sustainable.
“The way to peace does not go through global conferences that seek to impose agreements, make the Palestinians’ demands more extreme and thereby make peace more remote”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech late Wednesday.
She said the Middle East Quartet of the EU, Russia, United States and United Nations was finalizing recommendations on what should be done for the two sides to negotiate in good faith.
“If the global community comes together and says the two-state solution is the only option, that is important in itself — after years of people talking about the two-state solution being dead”.
Some analysts saw Netanyahu’s comments as a means of fending off his worldwide critics and perhaps scuttling the French initiative by proposing an alternative.
Violence since October has killed 206 Palestinians, 28 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese national.
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Its initial focus is to reaffirm existing worldwide texts and resolutions that are based on achieving a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza Strip co-existing with Israel, an outcome some say is becoming unrealistic.
