UNITED NATIONS — (AP) — France on Monday called on the European Union to pressure Israel to agree to a two-state solution with the Palestinians, the latest escalation from the French as they seek an end to the deadly Gaza war days after pledging to recognize Palestine as a state.
Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, told reporters at the United Nations that while there is international consensus that the time for a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now, world powers need to back up their words with actions.
“The European Commission, on behalf of the EU, has to express its expectations and show the means that we can incentivize the Israeli government to hear this appeal,” he said.
Barrot spoke on the first day of a high-level U.N. meeting on a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is being co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.
The conference, which was postponed from June and downgraded to the ministerial level, is taking place in New York as international condemnation of Israel's handling of the war in Gaza reaches a fever pitch. Both Israel and its closest ally, the United States, refused to participate in the meeting, which Barrot said is being attended by representatives of 125 countries, including 50 ministers.
The aim of the conference, Barrot said, is “to reverse the trend of what is happening in the region — mainly the erasure of the two-state solution, which has been for a long time the only solution that can bring peace and security in the region.”
He urged the European Commission to call on Israel to lift a financial blockade on 2 billion euros he says the Israeli government owes the Palestinian Authority, stop settlement building in the West Bank, which threatens the territorial integrity of a future Palestinian state, and end the “militarized” food delivery system in Gaza by the Israeli-backed U.S. Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has resulted in hundreds of killings.
Dubravka Šuica, the European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, told the meeting the EU is examining new sanctions and said it’s “imperative” that Israel transfer money owed to the Palestinians, and allow the delivery of food and other aid to Gaza.
She said the EU has been a long-term partner promoting reforms of the Palestinian Authority and welcomed the recent announcement of presidential and general elections within a year across the Palestinian territories. “We are keeping the Palestinian Authority from financial collapse,” she said, underscoring that the EU is supporting it with 161.6 billion euros for the next three years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the two-state solution on both nationalistic and security grounds. The U.S. has echoed that sentiment and on Monday called the conference “unproductive and ill-timed.”
“The United States will not participate in this insult but will continue to lead real-world efforts to end the fighting and deliver a permanent peace,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement. “Our focus remains on serious diplomacy: not stage-managed conferences designed to manufacture the appearance of relevance.”
Ahead of the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognize Palestine as a state at the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in September. The bold but mostly symbolic move is aimed at adding diplomatic pressure on Israel.
France is now the biggest Western power and the only member of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations to recognize the state of Palestine, and the move could pave the way for other countries to do the same. More than 140 countries recognize a Palestinian state, including more than a dozen in Europe.
At the conference opening, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa called for all countries that have not yet recognized Palestine as a state to do so “without delay.”
“The path to peace begins by recognizing the state of Palestine and preserving it from destruction,” he said.
The other issue being discussed at the conference is normalization between Israel and the Arab states in the region. Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, stressed that normalization of relations with Israel “can only come through the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
With global anger rising over desperately hungry people in Gaza starting to die from starvation, U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday called for increasing aid to Palestinians, a rare glimpse of daylight between him and Netanyahu, who has said there is no starvation.
Both Barrot and Farhan said Monday that the U.S. is an essential actor in the region and that it was the American president in January who secured the only ceasefire in the 21-month war.
“I am firmly in the belief that Trump’s engagement can be a catalyst for an end to the immediate crisis in Gaza and potentially a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the long term,” Farhan said.
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