The futile talkfest in Paris aimed its message at America, not the Middle East.
The Economist
January 17, 2017
The Paris meeting felt less like a diplomatic summit than a farewell concert thrown by an aging rock band. . . . Diplomats promised to meet again in Paris later this year. It may be difficult to justify the trip.
It was, even by the dispiriting standards of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, a futile concept: a peace conference without either of the warring parties. On January 15th diplomats from more than 70 countries flew to Paris for a summit against which Israeli officials had inveighing for weeks. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, called it “rigged” and his defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, compared it to the Dreyfus trial. So the French government, keen to avoid the embarrassment of having Israel refuse to attend, did not invite either side. It was “like a wedding without a bride and groom,” quipped Naftali Bennett, Israel’s right-wing education minister.
After a full day of debate, the diplomats issued a two-page declaration that urged both sides to “commit to the two-state solution . . . [and to] take urgent steps in order to reverse the current negative trends on the ground.” If that sounds familiar, it should. Parts of it were copied verbatim from the closing statement of the previous Paris peace conference, held in June.
Continue reading “An Israel-Palestine peace conference — without Israel or Palestine”
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