French FM: New peace initiative necessary to stop deterioration of Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Tovah Lazaroff/Jerusalem Post/May 15/16
An international peace process is necessary to stop the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from deteriorating, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters on Sunday after separately briefing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on his country’s new initiative to jump start direct talks.
“The process is frozen so there is a need for international intervention, because the situation is getting worse day by day,” he told reporters at a press conference he held in Jerusalem on Sunday afternoon before boarding a plane for China. He spoke to them in French, with the help of a Hebrew translator as he described a two-step process, that includes a May 30 ministerial meeting with some countries to be followed by a larger international peace conference in the fall.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders are not invited to the May ministerial meeting, but will be asked to attend the fall parley. Ayrault said he hoped that Netanyahu would get on board with the process by the time the fall peace conference is held. Netanyahu told Ayrault that he opposed the idea of a French led internationalized peace process, given that the only thing standing in the way of renewed negotiations was Abbas’s refusal to hold direct talks. “Our experience with history shows that only this way did we achieve peace with Egypt and Jordan and that any other attempt only makes peace more remote and gives the Palestinians an escape hatch to avoid confronting the root of the conflict which is non-recognition of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu told his weekly cabinet after the meeting.
“They simply avoid negotiating with us as part of their desire to avoid resolving the root of the conflict, which is recognizing the national state of the Jewish People, i.e. the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said. Ayrault told reporters he was not surprised by Netanyahu’s words, because his opinion had already been well publicized in the media in advance of his arrival. His description is correct, Ayrault said, Netanyahu is waiting for Abbas to respond to his invitation for talks, but this is not a new situation. The status quo cannot continue, so something else must happen, such as an internalized process that would include confidence building measures to bring both sides to the table.
“I know that Netanyahu does not agree. What I explained to him, is that things will happen in two stages, first the ministerial meeting and then a peace conference with the Israelis and the Palestinians to find a way out of this frozen situation,” Aryault said. During their conversation he stressed to Netanyahu the importance of French-Israeli ties. “I came with a clear message, one that has always been true for me in my heart, of close friendship toward Israel. I told this to Netanyahu immediately,” Aryault said. He added that he stressed that France believed that Israel had a right to live in peace and security alongside a sovereign Palestinian state with permanent borders. Aryault said he reminded Netanyahu that France had looked out for Israel’s security concerns during the Iran talks last year.
It is out of concern for Israel’s security that France wants to push forward a new initiative, he said. The threats that could prevent a two-state solution from occurring have grown, he said. The absence of direct talks, continued settlement building and violence against both Israelis and Palestinians have imperiled such a solution, Aryault said. The lack of progress has fueled frustrations, which in turn has fed a growing anger and is slowly killing any sense of hope, he said. The peace process must be renewed before it is to late, he said. On May 25th, five days prior to the ministerial meeting, the Quartet is expected to issue a report on the situation that will be the basis for some of the work that will be done during the Paris talks on the 30th, Aryault said.
Among the items on the agenda is the creation of working groups to diagnose the problem, he said. The list of attendees from different countries has yet to be finalized, he said. The United States, which has brokered all past peace processes, including the last one that fell apart in April 2014, has yet to confirm its participation or even to state its support for the process. US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with both Abbas and Netanyahu by telephone prior to Aryault’s arrival in Israel on Saturday night. The French foreign minister told reporters on Sunday that the US’s participation was important and that it would be willing to rearrange the date of its ministerial meeting to accommodate the schedule of US attendees. “The issue here won’t be a technical one,” he said.
