France continues to promote its initiative to convene an international peace conference in Paris despite a formal refusal by Israel to attend. During a meeting in Jerusalem between French special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts Pierre Vimont, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser Avriel Bar-Yosef, Israel rejected Frances invitation, warning it would distance the prospects of peace. That said, when the French envoy arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with the Palestinian leadership, President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed the Paris’ initiative, emphasizing the dire-need to restart the long-stalled process with international backing.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat revealed following the meeting between the French diplomat and the Palestinian President that France intends to issue the invitations for the international peace conference in December. The Palestinian chief negotiator also lashed out at Israel’s decision to reject the conference, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of seeking to advance a one state solution with two political systems, rather than the international aspiration of advancing a two-state solution.
“As expected, the Israeli government had unequivocally rejected the French initiative, they rejected before to implement agreement signed, they stopped the bilateral track and bi-literal negotiations and they opted to dictation rather than negotiations. This Israeli government is strategising on dictation rather than negotiations. They want to continue with their settlement activities, to repeat doing the two-state solution, believing that they can replace the two-state solution with what we call ‘one state, two systems’,” said Erekat.