Earlier Thursday, the director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that France’s bid to revive Israel-Palestinian peace talks was doomed, and compared it to a 1916 colonial effort to carve up the Middle East.
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The United States will be in Paris “to listen to the ideas that the French and others may have, and talk through with them what might make sense going forward”, a senior State Department official said. He was talking about “the seeds of intolerance, violence, self-destruction and moral deterioration”, i.e., the widespread and pervasive hatred of Palestinians by Israeli Jews.
The global movement calling for a boycott of Israel says its website was repeatedly attacked earlier this year. They are concerned that the Obama administration will, before leaving office, enshrine a two-state solution in a speech or a United Nations resolution, in effect laying out the final status ahead of negotiations.
Abbas, who welcomed the conference in France, emphasised that “the objective must be to implement the visions of both states, based on the border agreement of 1967 and the capital of the Palestinian state being East Jerusalem, so that both countries can live side by side, in safety, stability and peace – if Israel wishes to seek peace”.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians will be represented in Paris at Friday’s talks, which aim to lay the ground for a fully-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year.
“I take this opportunity to make clear that I remain committed to making peace with the Palestinians and with all our neighbors”, Netanyahu said in the Knesset May 31.
“The Israelis and Palestinians will resolve their differences when they sit down face to face and actually engage in constructive conversations about resolving their differences”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said May 31.
Netanyahu has already rejected the French-led multilateral effort. “Our ambition is thus to once again mobilize the global community”, he said.
The conference is due to be convened at the initiative of the French authorities.
On Monday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Saudi plan included “positive elements”. “So keeping the hope alive for a resolution of the conflict is very important”.
Foreign Minister Retno Lestari Priansari Marsudi will attend the Middle East peace conference in Paris on June 3, 2016.
The countries being invited to the conference are those who have helped in the Palestinian cause, including Indonesia.
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“A grand deal is not likely to happen so long as these leaders are both risk averse”, Makovsky said of Netanyahu and Abbas. “But nobody in the global community, including the United States, can make those hard decisions for the parties”.
