Palestinians and Israelis to skip France’s peace conference

France will convene an international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict attended by some 20 countries, though not by representatives from Israel or the Palestinian Authority.

Participants at the May 30th meeting in Paris will include the foreign ministers of the Quartet on the Middle East – the US, Russia, the EU and the UN – and leading members of the Arab League.

The Palestinians requested that it be scheduled before the the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins on June 7th.

If the conference makes progress, France hopes that Israel and Palestine will attend a Paris “peace congress” in the autumn.

The US does not want the peace congress to be held in the run-up to the November 8th presidential election, but has implied that president Barack Obama might be able to take a courageous stand after the election and before the end of his term in January.

French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who will chair the conference, made the announcement in an interview with four newspapers and on Europe 1 radio.

Bilateral talks

Israel insists that bilateral negotiations between itself and the Palestinian Authority, which is in a position of great weakness, are the only way to reach peace.

“The parties are further apart than ever,” Mr Ayrault said. “There is no solution other than the establishment of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, living side by side in peace and security, with Jerusalem as a shared capital.”

The Paris discussions will be based on the Saudi peace initiative of 2002. The 10-sentence proposal called for normal relations between Arabs and Israel in exchange for a complete withdrawal by Israel from all occupied territories and a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee problem.

“We must explain to the Israelis that colonisation is a dangerous process that imperils their own security,” Mr Ayrault said. “In Israel, the government is more and more ambiguous regarding a two-state solution, and the Palestinians are more and more divided, with a very angry base

“I am sincere but not naive,” he added. “The other option is to give up, and I refuse to do that.”

Recognise Palestine

Mr Ayrault’s predecessor,

Laurent Fabius

, laid the groundwork for the conference, but Mr Ayrault has abandoned the only means of pressure that France had over Israel: a commitment to unilaterally recognise Palestine if the talks fail.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, came to Paris on April 15th to discuss the French initiative and a concurrent attempt by the Palestinian Authority to obtain a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's continuing colonisation of the West Bank.

“The Palestinian question is the alibi of all fanatics,” Mr Abbas told journalists in Paris. “If we could resolve it, it could seriously hinder them. We must cool the fires that are flaring throughout the region, and also in Europe.”

The Palestinians hope the US might for once refrain from vetoing the resolution, because Mr Obama no longer has anything to lose.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 394 members of the House of Representatives have written to Mr Obama asking him not to allow Israel to be condemned by the Security Council.