News Analysis: Palestinians hope for sooner revival of stalled peace talks

The Palestinians are focusing their bet on the progress of France initiative for holding an international conference for peace in the Middle East, although the road to achieve the target is not paved with flowers, according to analysts and observers.

Paris hosted an international ministerial meeting Last Friday, attended by the foreign ministers of 25 countries, including four Arab countries, which debated the revival of the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Palestinians hope that the French initiative would lead to crystallizing an international coalition to sponsor the peace process and push it forward in line with international resolutions and conventions. However, they also realize that the French initiative would face some challenges.

Nabil Amro, a prominent Palestinian diplomat, said that those who believe that Paris meeting is meaningless "will be naive, and at the same time, those who believe that they can expect a lot more from this meeting will be naive too," adding that Paris meeting was successful for the Europeans.

"However, one of the major obstacles for a higher expectation is the American insistence to keep monopolizing the peace process in the Middle East and another obstacle is the clear Israeli rejection to accept and deal with the French initiative," said Amro.

Furthermore, he mentioned the Palestinian internal division, which may also obstruct implementing the French Initiative. He said, "this division between Gaza and the West Bank weakens Palestinian position to challenge Israel and oblige it to resume the peace process."

Amro also spoke about other regional obstacles, mainly the wars in the nearby countries, especially in Syria, but said that these obstacles can be overcome in pursuing for international arrangements in the region.

Following the ministerial meeting in Paris, the Palestinian Presidency announced in an official statement that President Mahmoud Abbas received a phone call from France Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and agreed that France would send envoy Pierre Vimont for peace in the region very soon.

"Ayrault reiterated to Abbas that France will keep its contacts with the international parties until September and will be discussing with all of them an evaluation of Paris meeting and what they had agreed upon and what is needed for the coming stage," according to the statement.

The foreign ministers who joined in the Paris meeting agreed in the final statement that the two-state solution is the only way to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

However, George Jackman, chairman of the Palestinian Institution for Democratic Studies, told Xinhua that the statement "was weak and dim due to a clear American pressure practiced on the meeting to ease any sharpness of the statement against Israel."

"Paris statement hasn't clearly specified time schedules for the resumption of the peace talks with Israel and didn't clearly state anything related to the ongoing conflict and also hasn't tackled issues related to the file of Palestinian refugees and their right of return," said Jackman.

He said that due to the absence of Germany, Britain and Russia in the Paris meeting, the opportunities of success for the French peace initiative are still unclear.

Earlier this week, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad el-Malki unveiled that France is planning to form a working committee to prepare for holding the international peace conference by the end of the year, which would decide the framework of the time schedule and the nature of the talks with Israel.

Khalil Shahin, a Ramallah-based political analyst, told Xinhua that "so far, the Palestinians have no alternative plan to the French initiative, but only to get back to the negotiations with better conditions that may come out from the French initiative and the international sponsorship of the peace process." Endit