France has called on the European Union to pressure Israel to agree to a two-state solution with the Palestinians, the latest escalation from France as it seeks an end to the deadly Gaza war days after pledging to recognise Palestine as a state.
Jean-Noel Barrot, the French foreign minister, told reporters at the United Nations that while there is international consensus that the time for a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now, world powers need to back up their words with actions.
“The European Commission, on behalf of the EU, has to express its expectations and show the means that we can incentivise the Israeli government to hear this appeal,” he said.
Mr Barrot spoke on the first day of a high-level UN meeting on a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is being co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.
The conference, which was postponed from June and downgraded to the ministerial level, is taking place in New York as international condemnation of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza reaches a fever pitch.
Both Israel and its closest ally, the United States, refused to participate in the meeting, which Mr Barrot said is being attended by representatives of 125 countries, including 50 ministers.
The aim of the conference, Mr Barrot said, is “to reverse the trend of what is happening in the region – mainly the erasure of the two-state solution, which has been for a long time the only solution that can bring peace and security in the region.”
He urged the European Commission to call on Israel to lift a financial blockade on two billion euros he says the Israeli government owes the Palestinian Authority; stop settlement building in the West Bank, which threatens the territorial integrity of a future Palestinian state; and end the “militarised” food delivery system in Gaza by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has resulted in hundreds of killings.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the two-state solution on both nationalistic and security grounds.
Ahead of the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognise Palestine as a state at the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly in September. The bold but mostly symbolic move is aimed at adding diplomatic pressure on Israel.
France is now the biggest Western power and the only member of the Group of Seven major industrialised nations to recognise the state of Palestine, and the move could pave the way for other countries to do the same.
More than 140 countries recognise a Palestinian state, including more than a dozen in Europe.
At the conference opening, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa called for all countries who have not yet recognised Palestine as a state to do so “without delay”.
“The path to peace begins by recognising the state of Palestine and preserving it from destruction,” he said.
The other issue being discussed at the conference is normalisation between Israel and the Arab states in the region. Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, stressed that normalisation of relations with Israel “can only come through the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
With global anger rising over desperately hungry people in Gaza starting to die from starvation, US President Donald Trump on Monday called for increasing aid to Palestinians, a rare glimpse of daylight between him and Mr Netanyahu, who has said there is no starvation.
Both Mr Barrot and Mr Farhan said on Monday that the US is an essential actor in the region and that it was the president in January who secured the only ceasefire in the 21-month war.
“I am firmly in the belief that Trump’s engagement can be a catalyst for an end to the immediate crisis in Gaza and potentially a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the long term,” Mr Farhan said.
