This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/15/world/middleeast/missing-at-israel-palestinian-peace-conference-israelis-or-palestinians.html

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Missing at Israel-Palestinian Peace Conference: Israelis or Palestinians World Leaders Push Israel and Trump to Forge a 2-State Deal
(about 11 hours later)
JERUSALEM The Palestinian leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, billed it as a “moment of great expectation.” Prime Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel dismissed it as “useless” and said it had been “rigged” by the Palestinians, under French auspices. PARIS An effort by France to give impetus to the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process through an international conference always faced long odds. But with an incoming American president who has vowed to support Israel no matter what, the project seemed even more quixotic.
As representatives of 70 countries and international organizations convened in Paris on Sunday for a conference reaffirming support for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the clearest indication of the distance between the actual parties was their absence. As senior representatives from some 70 countries gathered in Paris on Sunday and endorsed a new two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, what they had to offer was mostly symbolic.
Israel repudiated the so-called French Initiative from its inception last year, saying international meddling encouraged the Palestinians to avoid entering direct negotiations with Israel, without conditions. The Palestinians have lost faith in such talks. Because Israel made it clear that it would boycott the Paris conference, neither side was invited. Still, that symbol was clear: Though peace efforts seemed doomed, the leaders, representing every European nation, were signaling that they still saw them as critical and putting President-elect Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on notice that the process could be ignored only at their peril.
With only days to go in office, Secretary of State John Kerry attended, as did dozens of other foreign ministers, making the get-together look like a kind of bookend to an era. “The two-state solution, which the international community has agreed on for many years, appears threatened,” President François Hollande of France said as he opened the afternoon session. “It is physically threatened on the ground by the acceleration of settlements, it is politically threatened by the progressive weakening of the peace camp, it is morally threatened by the distrust that has accumulated between the parties, and that has certainly been exploited by extremists.”
The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said the conference was meant to reaffirm the commitment of the international community to the two-state solution, which he described as the only viable resolution of the long-running conflict. France held the first session of the conference in June, after the United States and others effectively gave up. Talks had broken down, and Mr. Netanyahu’s government had drawn international anger with its continued settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a red line for the process set out years before by Secretary of State John Kerry and other leaders.
But President-elect Donald J. Trump’s policies for the region remain unclear, and some of his appointments have raised questions about the incoming administration’s commitment to the idea of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. David M. Friedman, Mr. Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, has been an avid supporter of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, contrary to longstanding United States policy. The idea was to prevent the peace process from disappearing entirely from the international agenda, which was dominated by Syria, Ukraine and Libya, among other hot spots.
After years of tensions with the Obama administration, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to be looking forward to the prospect of a White House enthusiastically supportive of Israel’s positions. At the end of Sunday’s meeting, the countries issued a joint communiqué that reaffirmed support for a two-state solution a Palestinian state existing next to Israel and a return to the 1967 boundaries between the Israelis and Palestinians, including the removal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank. The statement referenced United Nations resolutions to that effect, including the condemnation of Israel in December, which the Obama administration declined to block, over its continuing settlement of the West Bank.
“I must say that this conference is among the last twitches of yesterday’s world,” the Israeli prime minister said in remarks before Sunday’s cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “Tomorrow’s world will be different and it is very near.” Most of these goals now seem starkly remote. Israel has continued to follow an aggressive policy of creating “facts on the ground” through continued settlement of land claimed by the Palestinians. The Palestinian side, at the same time, is hobbled by a divided leadership, with one wing, led by the militant group Hamas, still refusing to recognize Israel at all.
Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said last week that the conference would be “like a wedding with neither bride nor groom.” Although the meeting was called a conference, it was always framed more as a series of diplomatic meetings, since so many people would be in the room that any real negotiations seemed unlikely.
Mr. Abbas praised the French government and called upon the participants in the Paris conference to take “concrete measures in order to implement international law and U.N. resolutions.” In a statement on Saturday, after a visit to the Vatican, where an embassy of Palestine was opened for the first time, he added, “It is long overdue for the Palestinian people to exercise their basic right to live in freedom and dignity.” However, with the Israelis dismissing the meeting as “rigged” and refusing to send representatives, and with the Palestinians absent as well, it seemed even shakier than before. Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said last week that the conference was “like a wedding with neither bride nor groom.”
The opening of the embassy was another symbolic victory for Mr. Abbas on the path to international recognition of Palestinian statehood. Last month, the Obama administration allowed the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity as a flagrant violation of international law, defying extraordinary efforts by Mr. Trump and Israel to derail the vote. The Israelis were reluctant to participate because they want a negotiation that primarily involves only the two principal parties: Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians have lost faith in bilateral talks and now prefer that any negotiation go on in an international forum, where they can have more leverage.
Mr. Abbas is understandably concerned about the future, and is lobbying Mr. Trump to put aside a campaign pledge to move the United States embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. “Any attempts at legitimizing the illegal Israeli annexation of the city will destroy the prospects of any political process,” Mr. Abbas said, “bury the hopes for a two-state solution and fuel extremism in our region, as well as worldwide.” The Palestinians welcomed the conference’s final communiqué, and Dr. Saeb Erekat, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s secretary general, said in an emailed statement, “It is time to stop dealing with Israel as a country above the law and hold it accountable for its systematic violation of human rights and international law.”
After years of stalemate in the peace process, few Israelis or Palestinians appeared to believe that the Paris conference would yield results. In another sense, the meeting was also a last shot by a group of world leaders and diplomats who have driven the current peace process, fruitless though it has been, to preserve it in the face of major changes in the American delegation at the heart of the effort.
The leader of the opposition in Israel’s parliament, Isaac Herzog, of the center-left Zionist Union, wrote in a Twitter post that “Netanyahu should have been in Paris not because of its diminishing impact, but to present Israel’s position, rather than run away.” With Mr. Trump’s inauguration days away, his foreign policy is still mostly a matter of conjecture. But he has repeatedly signaled his displeasure with Mr. Obama’s approach toward Israel and the peace process.
A poll of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza last month indicated that only a quarter expected the French Initiative to result in any progress, while two-thirds said they thought the two-state solution was no longer viable because of settlement expansion. More than a third said they believed armed struggle was the best means of achieving a state alongside Israel. Israeli officials clearly expect that the pressure to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians will ease once Mr. Trump is in office. Some seem to be counting the hours: After Mr. Trump’s election victory, Naftali Bennett, the leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, exulted, “The era of a Palestinian state is over!”
While Mr. Trump has expressed a desire to make what he called the “ultimate deal” between Israel and the Palestinians, his staff has also reached out to the organization that represents the West Bank settlers, the Yesha Council. The council received multiple invitations to Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, according to a spokesman for the umbrella organization. A delegation led by Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the council and mayor of a large settlement, will be attending.
Perhaps the clearest signs of a coming change from the Americans are Mr. Trump’s personnel announcements: David M. Friedman, his nominee for ambassador to Israel and a bankruptcy lawyer aligned with Israel’s far right, has been an avid supporter of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
In Israel, Mr. Netanyahu asserts that he still supports the principle of a Palestinian state — but on his terms, not those of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, whom many Israelis view as too weak to deliver. Mr. Netanyahu’s terms are unacceptable to the Palestinians, who are now looking to the United Nations and other international forums for intervention.
Despite the resigned expressions on the faces of many of the representatives as they left Sunday’s meeting — and Mr. Netanyahu’s declaration, according to Israeli news outlets, that the conference was the “final palpitations” of yesterday’s world — there has been no official death knell for a two-state solution. No one has yet put forward an alternative that seems likely to gain international support and ultimately offer both Israelis and Palestinians more safety.
Still, there was a sense on Sunday that the conference was the close of an era of negotiations, centered around the two-state principle, that was driven by the Obama administration, and Mr. Kerry in particular.
In contrast with his previous rebukes of Mr. Netanyahu’s policies, Mr. Kerry’s role on Sunday was more conciliatory.
He worked to soften language in the final communiqué and to reassert the United States’ support for Israel. The United States lobbied for language condemning acts of “violence and terror and incitement,” a reference to Palestinians attacks inside Israelis. And over the weekend, Mr. Kerry called Mr. Netanyahu to assure him that the United States would not support a United Nations resolution in the wake of the Paris meeting.