France’s foreign minister heads to the Middle East this weekend with an initiative aimed at bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to peace talks under an international framework amid growing regional instability, Reuters reported, 19 June 2015.
.
U.S.-led efforts to broker peace for a two-state solution collapsed in April 2014 and leaders on both sides have since been weakened politically. But with the region’s crises worsening and Washington reassessing its options on U.S.-Israel relations, France sees a narrow window to resume negotiations.
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius will explore the prospects for talks with key Arab League ministers, including Saudi Arabia, in Cairo on Saturday and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday.
“Everything points to inertia, but we believe that this inertia is deadly,” said a senior French diplomat. “We can no longer isolate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the regional context.”
If the conflict remains unresolved, the diplomat added, radical groups such as Islamic State will make the Palestinian cause their own.

U.N. RESOLUTION
Paris hopes to persuade Arab states, the European Union and U.N. Security Council members to pressure both sides to make compromises neither wants to make alone.
“The method to reach a definitive solution has been for both sides to meet face to face with the Americans as an honest broker, but this method has failed,” the diplomat said. “It needs international support.”
France has so far focused with Arab states on a possible U.N. Security Council resolution that would set negotiating parameters and establish a time period, possibly 18 months, to complete talks.
The trip comes before a final round of nuclear talks between major powers and Iran in late June. Washington has made clear it will not discuss the Middle East process until the Iran situation is clear, which could delay French moves beyond September.
In December, the U.S voted against a Palestinian-drafted resolution calling for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the establishment of a Palestinian state by late 2017.
The Palestinians say they are ready to work with the French, but say any resolution must include a time frame for ending the “occupation” and sets a clear frame of reference in terms of 1967 borders and East Jerusalem being the capital of a Palestinian state.