Israel slammed on Friday the French-led conference in Paris aiming at reviving the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
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Netanyahu also called France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault soon after the summit ended, and advised France and its allies to press Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to restart direct talks with Israel, the report said.
While objecting to the French initiative, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has stopped short of saying Israel would boycott the conference.
Middle East Eye and agencies spoke to diplomats and experts about what propelled the French initiative and what its goals are.
It also says Jerusalem is Israel’s indivisible capital and can not be divided.
France prepared to host talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Friday that have received a cool response from Washington, but diplomats say merely shining the spotlight onto the stalemate is a victory.
France portrayed the meeting, the first global conference on the issue since Annapolis in the U.S. in 2007, as a first step by the worldwide community to weigh different options.
The foreign ministers’ meeting will last only three hours.
An global summit convened by France with the aim of re-starting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process concluded on Friday with participants reaffirming their commitment to a two-state solution and warning that the status quo in the region is unsustainable.
“We’re not here to propose any kind of specific agenda”, a senior State Department official said.
Others would focus on trying to find ways to break deadlocks that scuttled previous negotiations or look at whether other peace efforts such as a 2002 Arab initiative remain viable.
Israel has dismissed the summit as doomed to fail because it does not involve direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians. “Many of you urged me to take the opportunity to make hasty concessions, to rush to an agreement, but I will not establish Israel’s policy on illusions”.
“Ideas put forth in the French initiative constitute a serious encroachment on longstanding [Palestinian] demands, particularly the right of return”, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said in a joint statement.
Representatives from Russian Federation, the EU, UN and Arab League were among the 25 delegations in Paris for a Middle East peace conference.
“It is on the table and we believe that it is a solid basis for resolving this longstanding dispute”, Adel Jubeir told reporters at the a Paris-initiated global ministerial conference on the Israel-Palestine conflict settlement.
Israel continues to build settlements in the occupied West Bank, and Palestinians have taken to low-grade attacks on Israeli security officials – usually in the form of knife attacks that often result in the attacker being shot dead by security officers.
“Members of the worldwide community must exercise their collective and individual influence to help reach the common destination: they are an end to the occupation which began in 1967, and the establishment of two states for two peoples living side by side in security and mutual recognition”, the Secretary-General said.
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Analysts say Palestinian frustration of the deadlock in negotiations has driven a wave of violence which has left 206 Palestinians and 28 Israelis dead since October.
