US joins ‘rigged’ Paris peace conference
> Major powers to send Trump message over Israeli-Palestinian conflict
PARIS: The US was set to join the international community in Paris yesterday in a new push for peace in the Middle East, just days before Donald Trump, who has vowed unstinting support for Israel, takes office.
Foreign ministers and representatives from around 70 countries will seek to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which could be dealt a further blow if Trump implements a campaign pledge to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians will be represented at the conference and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the talks as “rigged” against the Jewish state.
The Palestinians, in contrast, have welcomed France’s bid for the conference to reaffirm global support for a two-state solution to the seven-decade-old conflict.
Peace efforts have been at a standstill since April 2014.
On Saturday, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas warned that acute tensions could boil over again if Trump moved the US embassy in Israel 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,” Abbas said during a visit to the Vatican.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who rebuked Israel recently over its settlements expansion, will attend the talks, along with delegates from the UN, EU, Arab League and other organisations.
The meeting is expected to back a UN resolution last month condemning Israeli settlement-building on occupied Palestinian territory.
The Security Council adopted the resolution after the Obama administration – in a parting shot at Netanyahu – took the rare step of abstaining from the vote.
Netanyahu called the resolution “shameful” and has also lashed out at the Paris meeting, saying only direct talks between the two sides can bring peace.
Abbas will meet French President Francois Hollande in the coming weeks to be briefed on the conference outcome, French diplomats said.
Netanyahu declined a similar invitation, they said.
Writing in Le Monde newspaper on Thursday, Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said France was not trying to impose a solution on the Israelis and Palestinians but to halt an “infernal cycle of radicalisation and violence”.
Palestinians were seeing “their future state melt away” due to settlement expansion, Ayrault charged.
Israelis meanwhile were subjected to nearly daily violence by those who “harness frustrations to promote an agenda of hatred”. – AFP