Trump Advisers Tell French Officials: We Strenuously Object to Paris Peace Conference

Finally the ADL and J Street and all the other corrupt and compromised Jewish “leaders” are getting their comeuppance. Soon we will have a President who is actually pro-Israel.

“Trump Advisers Tell French Officials: We Strenuously Object to Paris Peace Conference,” by Barak Ravid, Haaretz, January 15, 2017:

PARIS – Senior French officials met a few weeks ago in New York with President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers and presented the program for the international peace conference to be held Sunday in Paris, Haaretz has learned. Trump’s team was said to have objected strenuously to the very holding of the conference, especially at this time, five days before Trump’s inauguration.

The Paris conference is not expected to produce practical decisions, but rather to serve as declarative event of the international community’s intentions toward the Middle East peace process. According to French diplomats, the conference is being held at this time, a few days before the inauguration, to convey a message to the president-elect about the importance the international community ascribes to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the extent of international consensus.

Representatives from some 70 countries and organizations are to attend the conference, including 40 foreign ministers from several Arab and Western countries. For outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, this is expected to be the last international event he will be attending before his term ends on January 20. The conference, which will be attended by neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives, is to focus on a call by the international community to preserve the two-state solution and renewal of direct negotiations between the parties.

The conference will open at at 10:30 A.M. Israel time with a speech by French President Francois Hollande. Recommendations will then be presented that were formulated over the past few months by three working groups as part of the French initiative. The groups worked on economic incentives for the Israelis and the Palestinians, building the institutions of the future Palestinian state and strengthening groups in civil society working for peace.

At the close of the conference, scheduled for 7 P.M. Israel time, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault will present a concluding statement to the press. Senior diplomats from 10 of the participating countries met Saturday in Paris to debate the concluding statement. Some demanded that certain clauses be softened, while others demanded certain clauses be toughened.

Last week Haaretz published a draft of the conference’s closing statement, which included a call by the participating countries on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to reconfirm their commitment to the two-state solution and disavow officials in their government who oppose it.

“We call on each side to independently demonstrate, through policies and actions, a genuine commitment to the two-state solution and refrain from unilateral steps that prejudge the outcome of final-status negotiations, in order to rebuild trust and create a path back to meaningful direct negotiations,” according to the text.

In an interview to the French daily Le Figaro, Abbas said that the peace conference in Paris might be the last chance to implement the two-state solution. The Palestinian president warned against a possible American decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which he said could lead to a change in the PA position recognizing Israel. The year 2017, Abbas told Le Figaro, “must be the year the occupation ends and the year of liberty and justice for the Palestinian people.”…

We’re already seeing the Trump Effect in the UK: “UK refuses to sign Paris declaration, warns summit may harden Palestinian positions,” by Raphael Ahren, Times of Israel, January 15, 2017:

Dramatically breaking ranks with participants from 70 other countries, the United Kingdom criticized Sunday’s Middle East peace conference in Paris, arguing that it might harden Palestinian negotiating positions and refusing to sign a joint statement issued after the summit that called for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A Foreign Office spokesman said London had “particular reservations” about the Paris meeting taking place without Israeli or Palestinian representatives, especially since a new US administration is being sworn in later this week.

Indeed, the spokesman’s statement noted that the confab took place against Israel’s expressed wishes and “just days before the transition to a new American president when the US will be the ultimate guarantor of any agreement.”

“There are risks therefore that this conference hardens positions at a time when we need to be encouraging the conditions for peace.”

Due to these concerns, Britain had attended the Paris talks as an observer only and refused to sign the joint declaration issued after the conference, the spokesman said.

“We will continue to support efforts to improve conditions on the ground to enable negotiations to resume and look forward to working with the parties, the new US Administration and other countries represented in this conference to make progress in 2017 and beyond,” the spokesperson added.

The surprising statement appeared to align London’s position on the conference with Israel’s. Jerusalem repeatedly decried the event as a futile exercise that, if anything, will make peace harder to achieve.

“The conference convening in Paris today is a useless conference,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier on Sunday. “Its goal is to try and force terms on Israel that conflict with our national needs. Of course it pushes peace further away because it hardens the Palestinian positions and it also pushes them away from direct negotiations without preconditions.”

According to a report in the British press, London refused to send a high-level delegation to the Paris conference to appease US President-elect Donald Trump, who reportedly disapproved of the conference as well.

Rather than send a minister or its ambassador in Paris to Sunday’s conference, which hosted representatives from 70 countries, the United Kingdom had three junior diplomats attend. Some 35 countries send their foreign minister to Paris for the event, including the US, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Norway, Sweden and Egypt….