France Postpones International 'Peace' Conference
JERUSALEM, Israel – French President Francois Hollande said the international conference meant to jump start the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has been postponed until sometime this summer.
Hollande's decision to reschedule the May 30 conference followed a U.S. State Department announcement Monday that Secretary of State John Kerry would not be available during the Memorial Day weekend when America honors its fallen soldiers.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the two governments are working to reschedule the conference to which neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority were invited. They would be included in a second round of international talks hosted by France.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the French proposal, saying again the only way to resolve the issues is bilateral negotiations with no preconditions or outside pressure.
Meanwhile, senior Yediot Ahronot journalist Ben-Dror Yemini said the French initiative will not succeed without Israel's acceptance of the "right of return," a nonstarter for the Jewish state.
The French proposal includes other nonstarters. It does not require the P.A. to recognize Israel's right to exist as the national homeland of the Jewish people. And it demands a halt to all construction outside the 1949 armistice lines, another nonstarter for Israel.
Conversely, there is no reference to P.A. incitement in its government, school curriculum, cultural activities and mosques.
At a press conference Monday in Ramallah, P.A. Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah told reporters he hopes the French initiative will reset the "parameters."
"This will be followed by a peace conference in the summer and I hope this peace conference will have new parameters," Hamdallah said. "As you can see we have been negotiating with the Israelis for 22 years without any concrete results."
Hamdallah said the Iranian nuclear deal set a precedent.
"Now we look at the Iranian issue actually as a precedent. When the international community came together, a peaceful settlement was found for the Iranian issue," he said.
The P.A. prime minister also expressed hope for an international consensus that would force Israel to withdraw to the "1967 borders," which were, in fact, armistice lines that the late Israeli U.N. Ambassador Abba Eban called "Auschwitz lines" because they're indefensible.
"And maybe we can set a time limit for the withdrawal of the Israeli troops and a time limit for the establishment of the Palestinian sovereign independent state over the 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as our capital," Hamdallah said.
"The root cause for all conflicts in the region has been the Palestinian cause," he continued. "And we have been saying that for a long time. Our 'Nakba' started 68 years ago," he said. "Israel's occupation is the biggest incitement not only in Palestine, but in the region."
Nakba, which means "catastrophe," is an official P.A. holiday referring to the establishment of Israel.
Hamas, the Palestinian faction controlling the Gaza Strip, does not envision a two-state solution. Hamas is raising their next generation to continue the jihad ("holy" war) against Israel. Despite Hamdallah's claim that the P.A. is a model of tolerance, many also believe Fatah, the political arm of the P.A., is doing the same in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria).
