France threatens to "recognize a Palestinian state"

France's threat: French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, announced on Friday that France is about to announce soon officially that it recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, if negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians do not resume.

Foreign Minister Fabius said that France will try to convene an international peace conference with the participation of Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states. If that fails - and no doubt it will fail unless Netanyahu decides to change the composition of his government - France will act independently on two fronts. First, it will formally recognize a Palestinian state, and then it will consider further steps at the UN Security Council.

A political source in Jerusalem responded to the French foreign minister and said that "France's foreign minister said in advance that if the initiative will come to a dead end, France will recognize a Palestinian state. This statement is an incentive for Palestinians to reach an impasse. In this way, negotiations cannot achieve peace".

Chairman of Yesh Atid MK Yair Lapid, referring to the ultimatum of the French to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state in case there will be a regional peace conference, said that "Israel will not go under threat to negotiations. We will not be forced by threats to the negotiating table. Sovereign states do not accept that. We should go on our own terms, at our own pace, from our understanding that we do not want and we cannot reach a situation where we will try to swallow into ourselves 3.5 million Palestinians, but not so.

"This indicates a serious deterioration of our international standing. It would have happened once. It would not have happened once that a member of the UN Security Council would announce that it would recognize unilaterally the Palestinians without asking us first. It would not have happened once that the US customs would mark products. It would not have happened once that the EU would mark products from Israel including from the Golan Heights in which not one Palestinian lives."

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!