Paris meeting ‘very significant step’: Palestinians

“The Arab peace initiative has all the elements for a final settlement”, he told journalists after the conference.

“The Paris meeting will go down in history as having only hardened Palestinian positions and pushed peace further away”, Nahshon said in a statement, calling the event “a missed opportunity”.

“It is on the table and a solid basis for resolving this long-standing dispute… we hope that wisdom will prevail in Israel and that they accept this initiative”.

Israel has demanded tighter security measures from the Palestinians and a crackdown on militants who have attacked Israeli civilians.

In an opinion piece in Israel’s left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, Erakat said the latest initiative offered a “flicker of hope” that the Palestinians had been waiting for, and would “provide a clear framework with defined parameters for the resumption of negotiations”.

“The only way to get a stable regional arrangement that will allow us to create real peace in the Middle East is if the parties of the region come to understandings between them”, he said. They are alarmed that actions on the ground, in particular continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, are dangerously imperiling the prospects for a two-state solution, a joint statement said.

At a press conference on Thursday night, Gold compared the Paris peace summit to the Sykes-Picot agreement, the 1916 agreement between the United Kingdom and France to carve up the territory of the Middle East. Such global involvement, Gold suggested, would lead peace talks to fail.

US delegates will be in Paris “to listen to the ideas that the French and others may have, and talk through with them what might make sense going forward”, the official said, dampening expectations.

French officials, who have been pushing for this meeting for over a year, stressed that the goal wasn’t to impose a solution but to help Israels and Palestinians return to direct talks.

“Terrorists could benefit from the Israel-Palestine conflict”.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon attended, along with representatives from the Arab League, the European Union and key Arab states. “It is essential that we take action urgently”, said Ayrault.

And with the Middle East occupied by crises such as Syria’s civil war and fighting the Islamic State, global attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has withered – despite months of deadly unrest. “That’s how it was in the past when we achieved peace with Egypt and also with Jordan and that’s how it needs to be with the Palestinians”.

“Much is being invested in worldwide efforts, and the French initiative is on the agenda”, he said, referring France’s move to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks with a summit in Paris on Friday.

Netanyahu first rejected the French initiative in April, saying the “best way to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestinians is through direct, bilateral negotiations”, and instead voiced his support for Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi’s trilateral initiative aiming to bring Israeli and Palestinian leaders face to face and create steps towards the unification of Palestinian political factions.

He said the spread of terrorism around the world makes the push for peace more urgent.

Since then, all attempts to revive negotiations have failed, due mainly to Israel’s refusal to reconsider its policy of unbridled settlement construction on occupied Arab land.