The upcoming international peace conference in Paris is a “rigged” effort intended to hurt Israel and its hopes of reaching peace, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, adding that Jerusalem was not bound by any decision that would be taken there.
PM Netanyahu said: “It’s a rigged conference, rigged by the Palestinians with French auspices to adopt additional anti-Israel stances. This pushes peace backwards”. He added: “It’s not going to obligate us”.
During a meeting with Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende, PM Netanyahu called the planned conference, scheduled for Sunday, “a relic of the past”. He stated: “It’s a last gasp of the past before the future sets in”.
72 nations are expected to participate in the peace conference on Sunday – but not Israel or the Palestinians. Israel rejects the Paris conference, arguing that real progress can only be achieved through direct bilateral talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
France’s President Francois Hollande said that Sunday’s conference in Paris aims to ensure the support of the international community for the two-state solution as a reference for future direct negotiations.
Senior officials in the outgoing U.S. administration have vowed to veto any UN Security Council resolution that tried to enshrine parameters for a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
Speaking to Israel’s Channel 2 in an interview aired this week, President Obama said: “The view that I’ve expressed consistently is that a resolution that outlined a final status, that would not be appropriate. Because the truth is that this won’t get solved unless the Israeli people and the Palestinians want to solve it”.
