However, it will not include representatives from Israel or Palestine. “The Arab Peace Initiative contains positive elements that could help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians”, Netanyahu declared in the Knesset.
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Representatives from 28 countries, the Arab League, European Union and United Nations discussed ways in which the worldwide community could “help advance the prospects for peace, including by providing meaningful incentives to the parties to make peace”, a joint statement said.
Israel has criticised the initiative, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying earlier this week: “The path to peace is not via global conferences that attempt to force a settlement, that make the Palestinian demands more extreme and in the process distance peace”.
And although US Secretary of State John Kerry is attending the conference, Washington has made it clear it believes little or nothing will be achieved.
Although the concluding communique made no reference to deadlines for negotiations, the French foreign minister said there was a need for a defined time framework, and that numerous participants mentioned this during the meeting.
French President Francois Hollande and his Foreign Affairs minister Jean Marc Ayrault, left, arrive to attend an worldwide meeting in a bid to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in Paris, France, Friday, June 2, 2016.
“The only victor of a status quo would be extremists”, he added.
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“The discussion on the conditions for peace between Israelis and Palestinians must take into account the entire region”, he said. Palestinian officials said Friday the French efforts were too vague.
Mr Ayrault said the talks were focused on the 2002 Saudi-led Arab peace initiative.
“The only way to get a stable regional arrangement that will allow us to create real peace in the Middle East is if the parties of the region come to understandings between themselves”, he said.
The interim 1993 Oslo peace accords were meant to yield a “two state solution” within five years.
Gentiloni reiterated that the two-State solution was the “only one possible” and said terrorism could feed on the “vacuum” created by the stalemate. But negotiations broke down after eight months, with the US blaming an expansion of settlements by Israel.
The Obama administration has not pushed to renew peace talks because of the growing animosity between Israel and Palestinians at this time.
France convened foreign ministers from major powers to try to put Israeli-Palestinian peace-making back on the global agenda and find enough common ground to bring the two sides back to the table by the end of the year.
Despite a sense of scepticism that the French peace initiative will succeed where so many others have failed, Ayrault said the world could not “fold its arms and do nothing”. Israel has demanded tighter security measures from the Palestinians and a crackdown on militants who have attacked Israeli civilians.
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Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War and has been controlling it ever since despite global condemnation. “But there is a serious basis for thinking that, actually, the sequence is exactly the opposite – that by improving ties with the Arab states, we set the stage for a future breakthrough with the Palestinians”. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians were invited to the conference, though the objective is to get them to negotiate after the US elections.
