Talks end in warning to Israel and Trump
France says embassy shift to Jerusalem would have dire results, as conference seeks commitment to two-state solution
PARIS // About 70 countries yesterday warned Israel and the Palestinians against taking action over Jerusalem and urged them to commit to a two-state solution.
The final communique of the Middle East peace conference in Paris shied away from explicitly criticising plans by US president-elect Donald Trump to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, but France warned that such a move would have serious consequences.
Neither Israel nor Palestine attended the conference, which Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed as futile.
France called the gathering to reaffirm global support for a two-state solution to the seven-decade conflict, seen as increasingly elusive.
The Palestinians have warned that Mr Trump’s campaign pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem could end their chances of statehood.
French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the move would have “extremely serious consequences” and predicted that Mr Trump would find it impossible to implement.
“When you are president of the United States, you cannot take such a stubborn and such a unilateral view on this issue. You have to try to create the conditions for peace,” Mr Ayrault said.
The Palestinians regard Israeli- annexed East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, while Israel claims the entire city as its capital.
The city is one of the thorniest issues in the conflict.
President Francois Hollande told the summit that the prospect of two independent states existing side by side was “not the dream of yesterday’s system”.
“It remains the goal of the entire international community for the future,” he said.
Mr Netanyahu, who insists that only direct talks with the Palestinians can bring peace, has dismissed the Paris meeting as “a last gasp of the past”.
Yesterday he called it a futile exercise aimed at “imposing upon Israel conditions that are incompatible with our national needs”.
Mr Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas have been invited to meet with Mr Hollande to discuss the conclusions of the Paris talks.
Mr Abbas is expected to travel to Paris in the coming weeks but Mr Netanyahu has rejected the offer, French diplomats said. The conference is mainly symbolic but comes at a crucial point for the Middle East, five days before Mr Trump is sworn in as US president. Mr Trump has said “there’s nobody more pro-Israeli than I am”, and his choice for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is a hardliner who says he looks forward to working from “Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem”.
Israel, which is still seething over a critical UN resolution last month, fears the Paris meeting could produce measures hastily put to the Security Council before Mr Trump takes over.
The French have stressed they have no such plans.
US secretary of state John Kerry, who rebuked Israel recently over its settler activity, joined the Paris talks on his farewell tour along with delegates from the UN, EU and Arab League. The conference communique called on Israel and the Palestinians to reiterate their support for two states and to refrain from “unilateral steps that prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations”. On Saturday, Mr Abbas said that tensions could boil over if the US embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
“Any attempts at legitimising the illegal Israeli annexation of the city will destroy the prospects of any political process, bury the hopes for a two-state solution and fuel extremism in our region, as well as worldwide,” he said.
Tensions have spiralled recently after a wave of Palestinian attacks and inflammatory talk on both sides. Israeli-Palestinian efforts have been at a standstill since a US-led initiative collapsed in April 2014.