Israel has said that the French initiative to restart peace talks between Israel and Palestine is “doomed to fail.’ Dore Gold, director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry compared the French initiative to the unsuccessful 1916 colonial effort to carve up the Middle East”.
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France has grown frustrated over the absence of movement towards a “two-state solution” since the collapse of the last round of talks in April 2014.
Participants chose to set up teams by the end of the month to work on economic and security incentives for the Israelis and Palestinians for reaching a deal, French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said at a news conference.
Mahmoud Nawajaa, a spokesman for the Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) National Committee, expressed his concern at France’s hosting of a meeting to pave the way for talks, while at the same time criminalising and persecuting BDS activists, whose strategy is to call on global civil society to exert pressure on Israel and Israeli society.
“In the end it will come down to the Israelis and Palestinians – and only them – to make the courageous choice of peace”, Hollande said.
Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives attended the talks, which are aimed at laying the ground for a full-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year.
“It will go down in history that the conference in Paris simply resulted in hardened Palestinian positions and distant peace”, the ministry charged. “We’re just starting, let’s get into the conversations”, he said while shuffling between meetings.
According to a senior Israeli official, Netanyahu also told Ayrault that the French initiative could harm the regional efforts to launch peace talks.
“The conference in Paris was a missed opportunity”, read the statement.
A partial view shows the East Jerusalem Israeli settlement of Har Homa from the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, May 23, 2016.
Burkhalter said progress was needed on two fronts.
“We’re not bringing any specific proposals to this meeting tomorrow”, a senior State Department official was quoted as saying. But this initial meeting is expected to be followed by another, later this year, where the two sides are expected to participate. Israel, which has occupied East Jerusalem since the 1967 Middle East war, regards the whole of the city as its indivisible capital, though this is not recognised by the global community. “I have no faith in peace initiatives that are so similar to previous ones, based on the two-state solution which is impossible now that Israel is already implementing one Zionist state in all of historic Palestine”, she argued.
Hollande seems to be glossing over sectarian violence in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and beyond, conflicts that do not center around Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
“We believe the Arab states would give backing to direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians”, he added. “The Arab peace initiative includes positive elements that can help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians”, Netanyahu said during a Knesset session on Monday evening.
In an opinion piece in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Erekat said the Paris talks offered “a broader framework” than the moribund bilateral track.
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“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.
