Nabil Abu Rdineh said in a press statement at the end of a meeting held on Sunday in Ramallah between President Abbas and France Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault that the talks between the two men focused on the efforts that France exerts for holding an worldwide conference for peace in the Middle East.
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Netanyahu cited concerns about the nature of the conference, worrying that an worldwide forum might force a decision. Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative, rightly believes Israel’s decision proved that “an alternative national strategy that focused on popular resistance and the boycott movement” was essential, in addition to reconciling feuding parties Hamas and Fatah.
“I told him that the only way to advance true peace between us and the Palestinians is through direct talks, without preconditions”, he said of his meeting with Ayrault.
He noted that anything other than bilateral negotiations gives the Palestinians an “escape hatch” to avoid recognizing Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people”.
The Paris-based United Nations cultural body had adopted the resolution on Occupied Palestine presented by several Arab countries in mid-April, referring several Israel as the “occupying power”.
Paris plans to host a ministerial meeting of 20 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, as a first step to discuss the peace process.
In a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu said that he had brought up to Ayrault a UNESCO resolution in April regarding the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, which France vote in favor of.
Neither spoke to reporters.
An worldwide gathering of ministers, tentatively planned for May 30 in Paris, is set to include the Middle East Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations), the Arab League, the U.N. Security Council and about 20 countries, without Israeli or Palestinian participation.
France has invited more than 20 foreign ministers to a meeting scheduled for May 30 which would set the agenda for an worldwide peace conference in late 2016 aimed at resuming the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The one-day event will mark the formal start of preparations for a larger French-led global peace conference that would be held in the fall.
A French diplomatic source said the meeting would take place before Ramadan, which begins around June 6, and that the United States had made some constructive proposals to the meeting’s agenda.
Ayrault said on Sunday the USA “shared our concern” and France would be willing to move the conference “a day or two” in order to allow Kerry to attend, signaling for the first time the involvement and support of the United States. Just before concluding his visit, Ayrault promised to continue to strive for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement.
France was intervening as a “disinterested” player in the peace process, Le Monde quoted Ayrault as saying, but France also “profoundly convinced that if we do not want the Islamic State’s ideas to prosper in this region, something must be done”.
The United States hasn’t decided yet to join an global peace conference that France intends to hold, and its position is still unclear.
The exhibition, totalling 150 entries from 50 countries, with many entries deriding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government’s Middle East policies, opened Saturday in Tehran.
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Netanyahu had fiercly opposed last year’s nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, which saw the lifting of worldwide sanctions in return for Tehran ensuring that its nuclear programme remains purely for civilian use.
