Israel braces itself for Paris peace confab...by doing nothing

Raphael Ahren, The Times of Israel

The French initiative is a 'serious and dangerous attack' on Israel’s standing in the world, says Dan Meridor

Meridor image from article

Excerpt:

This coming Friday, foreign ministers from some of the world’s most powerful countries, including the United States, Russia and Germany, as well as a handful of Arab states, will gather in Paris to discuss ways to reanimate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

[A] lackadaisical wait-and-see approach to the Paris peace conference is emblematic of Israel’s Palestinian policy since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2009. ...

The French initiative is a “very serious and dangerous attack” on Israel’s standing in the world, said Dan Meridor, a former deputy prime minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party. Dismissing it without offering a credible alternative toward progress in the peace process could have severe ramifications for Israel, he assessed.

“We need to launch our own diplomatic initiative. The government needs to determine what it wants in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank],” continued Meridor, who today is the president of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations. If only Israel were to declare where it would want to draw the border with a future Palestinian state, it could radically change public perception about its obduracy and put the ball in Ramallah’s court, he argued.

The government needs to determine what it wants in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank],” [said] Meridor, who today is the president of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations. If only Israel were to declare where it would want to draw the border with a future Palestinian state, it could radically change public perception about its obduracy and put the ball in Ramallah’s [see] court, he argued.

“This is not a question of hasbara [public diplomacy]. We can’t explain our policy as long as we don’t have a clear policy.” ...

While Jerusalem shrugs off the French initiative as a nuisance, doomed to failure like so many multilateral efforts that came before, Ramallah sees value in the proposal even if it does not immediately lead to success. For the Palestinians, the conference is another step in their ongoing effort to internationalize the conflict, and thus to “shift the inequitable power dynamic between Israel and Palestine.”