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Paris to continue promoting peace bid despite Israel's objection: FM

Xinhua, May 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

France is going to keep up with its efforts to convene an international Middle East peace conference despite Israel's objection, France's Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reports at the end of his visit to Israel.

"We aren't giving up, and neither are our partners," Ayrault told a Jerusalem press conference. He added that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told him he only wants direct negotiations with the Palestinians. "But that option is stalled," Ayrault noted.

The French minister is on a visit to the region in an effort to push forward with the French bid for a peace summit to revive the talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The initiative was endorsed by the Palestinians but instantaneously rejected by Israel.

In the afternoon, Ayrault is scheduled to meet the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

Earlier in the day, Netanyahu told him in their meeting that Israel still objects the peace summit.

"I told him that the only way to advance a true peace between us and the Palestinians is by means of direct negotiations between us and them, without preconditions," Netanyahu said during his weekly cabinet meeting.

"Our experience with history shows that only this way did we achieve peace with Egypt and Jordan and that any other attempt only makes peace more remote and gives the Palestinians an escape hatch to avoid confronting the root of the conflict which is non-recognition of the State of Israel," Netanyahu said.

The last round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian reached an impasse in April 2014 over the Israeli expansion of the Jewish settlements and the formation of a unity government between Fatah and Hamas.

The French bid comes amid the worst flare-up between Israelis and Palestinians in two years. It includes frequent Palestinian knife, shooting, and car-ramming attacks and harsh Israeli response, which so far have killed at least 203 Palestinians and 28 Israelis in recent months. Endit