Tag Archives: Jerusalem

Arab League, Egypt say Palestinian-Israeli conflict needs 2-state solution

Israeli barrier along East Jerusalem

CAIRO (Reuters) – The Palestinian-Israeli conflict requires a two-state solution, the Arab League and Egypt reaffirmed on Thursday, distancing themselves from a move away from that commitment by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The idea of a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel has underpinned Middle East peace efforts for decades.

But the Republican president said on Wednesday after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would accept whatever peace the two sides chose, whether it entailed two states or one.

Egypt was committed to a two-state solution, a foreign ministry spokesman told state news agency MENA.

In comments also reported by MENA, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit agreed, adding that moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would make the Middle East more volatile.

“It requires a comprehensive and just settlement based on a two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on … 1967 borders with its capital in Jerusalem,” it quoted Aboul Gheit as saying after meeting the U.N secretary general chief Antonio Guterres in Cairo.

Guterres told a news conference on Wednesday there was “no alternative” to the two-state solution.

In Israel, Netanyahu’s far-right political allies hailed the U.S. shift in support for a Palestinian state and shrugged off a call by Trump to curb Israeli settlements on occupied land.

(Reporting by Lin Noueihed and Omar fahmy, writing by Amina Ismail; Editing by Eric Knecht and Toby Chopra)

Netanyahu’s far-right allies hail U.S. shift on ‘two states’

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netayahu

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right political allies hailed on Thursday a shift in U.S. support for a Palestinian state and shrugged off a call by President Donald Trump to curb Israeli settlements on occupied land.

In his first face-to-face meeting with Netanyahu as president, Trump on Wednesday dropped a U.S. commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the longstanding bedrock of Washington’s Middle East policy.

The Republican president said he would accept whatever peace solution the Israelis or Palestinians chose, whether it entailed two states or one. “I can live with either one,” said Trump.

The ultranationalist Jewish Home party in Netanyahu’s coalition claimed some of the credit for the shift.

“What we did … definitely helped change the picture,” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of Jewish Home said on Army Radio, referring to its pressure on Netanyahu ahead of his trip.

Party leader Naftali Bennett, an advocate of annexing parts of the occupied West Bank the Palestinians want in any future state, was equally upbeat in comments on Facebook.

“The Palestinian flag has been lowered and replaced by the Israeli flag,” said Bennett, who is battling Netanyahu for right-wing voters but whose party is crucial for the cohesion of the governing coalition.

NETANYAHU GOT “WHAT HE WANTED”

Before Netanyahu’s trip, Bennett had said on Facebook “the earth will shake” if the prime minister used the words “two states” or “Palestine” in Washington. And he didn’t.

Netanyahu, who first conditionally backed Palestinian statehood in 2009, did not explicitly rule out a homeland for the Palestinians during his talks with Trump but he meticulously avoided using the term “two-state” in his remarks.

Political commentator Sima Kadmon, writing in Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, said right-wingers had every reason to cheer but added that Netanyahu’s arm had needed no twisting when it came to Palestinian statehood.

“Netanyahu received exactly what he wanted from the American president. One state, two states — what difference does it make? That is precisely the attitude Netanyahu wanted to see from the president – someone who doesn’t have the foggiest clue what he is talking about,” she said.

By contrast, Palestinians voiced alarm at the change in U.S. tone. In a statement, President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his commitment to a two-state solution and demanded a halt to settlement expansion.

In the radio interview, Shaked played down Trump’s surprise call on Netanyahu to “hold back on settlements for a bit”, suggesting it was not a precise demand for a total freeze.

In a statement this month welcomed by Israeli officials, the White House reversed a long-standing policy of condemning building on occupied land, though it also said building new settlements or expanding existing ones may not be helpful in achieving peace.

Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, Israel has announced plans for almost 6,000 more settlement homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, drawing European and Palestinian condemnation but none from the White House.

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Rights groups challenge Israel’s new settlements law in court

view of houses in Israeli settlement in West Bank

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Rights groups petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to annul a heavily criticized law that retroactively legalized some 4,000 settler homes built on privately owned Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

The law, approved by parliament on Monday, has drawn condemnation from Europe and the United Nations and has been described by Israel’s attorney general as unconstitutional.

Acting on behalf of 17 Palestinian villages and towns, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah), and the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center also asked the court for an injunction in order to stop any registration of the plots as under settler ownership.

The Supreme Court has in the past supported Palestinian property rights and annulled laws it deemed unconstitutional.

The legal process in some of those cases took months, though the court usually rules on injunction requests within days.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the law an aggression against the Palestinian people and threatened to suspend security cooperation with Israel if its ramp-up of Israeli settlements continued.

On Tuesday Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that if implemented, the measure would cross a new and dangerous threshold.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the action went against international law, while French President Francois Hollande said it paved the way for the annexation of territory Palestinians want as part of a future state.

The administration of new U.S. President Donald Trump has so far signaled a softer approach toward Israeli settlement policy. Trump will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on Feb 15.

Most countries consider Israeli settlements built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East War as illegal and obstacles to peace.

Some 550,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, which was also seized by Israel in 1967, among 2.6 million Palestinians who want those territories for a future state.

In January, Israel announced it would build about 6,000 new homes in the two areas, to which it cites biblical, historical and political connections.

(Additional reporting by Luke Baker; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and John Stonestreet)

Israel interprets U.S. settlements statement as green light

rainbow over Israeli settlement

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli officials welcomed on Friday what they took as U.S. consent to expand existing settlements, after the White House reversed a long-standing policy of condemning building on occupied land.

In its first substantive announcement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Trump administration said it did not see existing settlements hampering peace with the Palestinians, although it recognized that “expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.”

At one level, that appeared to be an attempt to rein in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has announced wide-ranging settlement expansion plans since the Jan. 20 inauguration, including around 6,000 new homes.

But on closer reading, the statement was a softening of policy from the Obama administration and even that of George W. Bush, because it does not view settlements as an obstacle to peace or rule out their expansion within existing blocs.

“Netanyahu will be happy,” a senior Israeli diplomat said in a text message. “Pretty much carte blanche to build as much as we want in existing settlements as long as we don’t enlarge their physical acreage. No problem there.”

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely from the right-wing of Netanyahu’s Likud party, interpreted it in a similar way, saying construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want for their own state together with Gaza, would go on unhindered.

“It is also the opinion of the White House that settlements are not an obstacle to peace and, indeed, they have never been an obstacle to peace,” she said. “Therefore, the conclusion is that more building is not the problem.”

Israel seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. The 50th anniversary of the occupation, which Israel marks as a reunification of Jerusalem, is in June.

There was no immediate comment from the Palestinians.

DOUBLE BENEFITS

Since taking office, President Trump has largely kept quiet on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, making no comment in response to Netanyahu’s announcements for thousands more settler homes, a silence interpreted as endorsement. During the campaign, Trump said he would not interfere or push Israel to negotiate on a two-state solution to the conflict.

He has nominated David Friedman as ambassador to Israel, a religious Jew who has raised money for the settlements and supports moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump supported that idea during the election campaign, but it has been put on the back-burner in recent weeks.

Under Barack Obama, the White House maintained a firm anti-settlements line, calling them illegitimate and an obstacle to peace. Most of the world considers settlements illegal under international law, a position Israel rejects.

The European Union and Britain issued statements this week criticizing Netanyahu’s settlement plans, which they see as further breaking up the West Bank and undermining the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state ever emerging.

Netanyahu, who will visit Trump in Washington on Feb. 15, may see the White House statement as doubly beneficial.

As well as not ruling out building within existing blocs, which Israel hopes to retain in any final agreement with the Palestinians, it may allow him to silence far-right voices in his own coalition calling for much greater settlement growth and annexation of parts of the West Bank.

Trump has effectively set a limit on how far-ranging settlement-building can be, so Netanyahu will be able to tell the far-right their ambitions are out of the question.

At the same time, Netanyahu may have to curtail some of the plans he himself has announced in recent days.

While most of the 6,000 settler homes he has promised are in existing blocs, many are not and may have to be scrapped if he wants to adhere to the White House line. He may also have to rethink a pledge this week to build the first new West Bank settlement since the 1990s.

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Robin Pomeroy)

Netanyahu backs U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem though signals no urgency

giant banner congratulating Donald Trump in Jerusalem, Israel

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced support on Sunday for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem but mentioned no time frame, after a Republican activist accused Israel of pressing the Trump administration to delay the pledged step.

In an interview with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Marc Zell, head of the Republicans Overseas Israel branch, said new U.S. President Donald Trump was “proceeding cautiously because of concerns raised by Israeli officials”.

Trump’s team spoke often during the presidential campaign about shifting the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israel’s self-proclaimed capital and a holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But a week ago, Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, lowered expectations of an imminent announcement about an embassy move that would anger the Arab world and possibly touch off violence. [ID:nL5N1FD5Y9]

Palestinian officials said the embassy’s relocation would kill off any prospects for peace. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem – which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally – for the capital of a state they seek in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israeli officials said last Sunday the embassy issue was barely discussed in a 30-minute telephone call between Trump and Netanyahu, who are to meet in Washington early next month.

Netanyahu addressed the matter in general terms in public remarks to his cabinet on Sunday that were described by Israeli media as a response to Zell’s accusation of foot-dragging.

“I want to take the opportunity to make it unequivocally clear that our position has always been, and remains so now and at all times, that the U.S. embassy should be here, in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said, without directly mentioning Zell.

Currently, no country has its embassy in Jerusalem, the Israeli foreign ministry said. Costa Rica and El Salvador did until a few years ago, but they are now in Tel Aviv.

“Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and it is right and proper that all of the foreign embassies, and not only the American embassy, move here. I believe that in time, most of them will indeed come to Jerusalem,” Netanyahu told the cabinet.

The international community says Jerusalem’s final status should be determined via direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians – talks that collapsed in 2014.

Israeli officials have said they do not want a U.S. embassy move rushed and political commentators have noted that its relocation would damage the stronger relations Israel has been quietly building with the Sunni Muslim world.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Israel advises citizens in Egypt’s Sinai to leave, cites attack risk

Israel Egypt borders

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel on Tuesday advised its citizens in Egypt’s insurgency-hit Sinai peninsula to leave the region, warning of the threat of an imminent attack.

Israeli holidaymakers are often warned of the risks they face in Sinai, which borders Israel, but the “Level 1” alert issued by the anti-terrorism directorate is its most severe warning.

It described the threat as “very high and concrete”.

“The directorate warns of the possibility of attacks against tourist sites in the Sinai area in the immediate term,” a statement said.

An Islamist insurgency in the rugged, thinly populated Sinai has gained pace since the military toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s oldest Islamist movement, in mid-2013 following mass protests against his rule.

Militants have launched a number of deadly cross-border attacks on Israel in the past few years and have occasionally fired rockets across the border into the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat.

The anti-terrorism directorate said that while there was a “constant high threat” in Sinai, Jan. 25, the anniversary of the 2011 revolution in Egypt, was a day that had witnessed attacks in previous years.

Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1978 and the eastern coast of the peninsula is a popular international tourist destination.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; editing by Richard Lough)

Israel plans more than 2,500 new settler homes to start Trump era

Palestinian man next to Israeli settlement

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel announced plans on Tuesday for 2,500 more settlement homes in the occupied West Bank, the second such declaration since U.S. President Donald Trump took office signaling he could be more accommodating toward such projects than his predecessor.

A statement from the Israeli Defence Ministry, which administers lands Israel captured in a 1967 war, said the decision was meant to fulfil demand for new housing “to maintain regular daily life”.

Most of the construction, it said, would be in existing settlement blocs that Israel intends to keep under any future peace agreement with the Palestinians. However, a breakdown provided by the prime minister’s office showed large portions of the planned homes would be outside existing blocs.

Trump spoke by phone on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Tuesday, the new president’s chief spokesman refrained from stating a position on the settlement announcement but said the two leaders would discuss settlement building when they meet in Washington next month.

Asked whether Trump supports the latest settlement announcement, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters: “Israel continues to be a huge ally of the United States. He wants to grow closer with Israel.” Pressed again on the issue, he said: “We’ll have a conversation with the prime minister.”

The muted response from the Trump White House, which has promised an approach more aligned with Israel’s government, was a clear departure from Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, whose aides routinely criticized settlement construction plans.

U.N. Middle East envoy Nikolay Mladenov is due to brief the U.N. Security Council behind closed doors on Wednesday at the request of council member Bolivia, diplomats said.

About 350,000 settlers live in the West Bank and a further 200,000 in East Jerusalem, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war. Beyond the major blocs, most of which are close to the border with Israel, there are more than 100 settlement outposts scattered across hilltops in the West Bank.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the Israeli announcement and said it would have “consequences”. The West Bank and East Jerusalem are home to more than 2.6 million Palestinians.

“The decision will hinder any attempt to restore security and stability, it will reinforce extremism and terrorism and will place obstacles in the path of any effort to start a peace process that will lead to security and peace,” he said.

Palestinians want the West Bank and Gaza Strip for an independent state, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

OBSTACLE TO PEACE

The European Union said Israel’s settlement plans “further seriously undermine the prospects for a viable two-state solution”.

Most countries consider settlements illegal and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace as they reduce and fragment the territory Palestinians need for a viable state.

Israel disagrees, citing biblical, historical and political connections to the land – which the Palestinians also assert – as well as security interests.

During the U.S. election campaign, Trump indicated he would dispense with Obama’s opposition to settlement building, a stance that delighted Netanyahu’s government. He was sworn in on Friday.

On Sunday, Israel announced plans for hundreds of new homes in East Jerusalem, and the right-wing Netanyahu told senior ministers he was lifting restrictions on settlement construction across the board.

“We can build where we want and as much as we want,” an official quoted Netanyahu as telling the ministers.

Following Tuesday’s announcement, the prime minister’s office listed some of the West Bank areas scheduled for new construction. Not all were in settlement blocs.

“I have agreed with the defense minister to build 2,500 new homes in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) – we are building and will continue to build,” Netanyahu wrote in a tweet. Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman is himself a settler.

The Defence Ministry statement said 100 of the new homes would be in Beit El, a settlement which has received funding from the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, now a White House adviser.

David Friedman, Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel and a staunch supporter of settlers, has served as president of the American Friends of Beit El, a group that raises funds for the settlement.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; writing by Ori Lewis; editing by Mark Heinrich, Howard Goller and Andrew Hay)

Israel lifts restrictions on building more homes in East Jerusalem

Israeli settlements being built

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told senior ministers he is lifting restrictions on settlement building in East Jerusalem, a statement said on Sunday, immediately after the city’s municipal government approved permits for the building of hundreds of new homes in the area.

“There is no longer a need to coordinate construction in the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. We can build where we want and as much as we want,” the statement quoted Netanyahu as saying, adding that he also intended to allow the start of building in the West Bank.

“My vision is to enact sovereignty over all the settlements,” the statement also said, pointing to Netanyahu’s apparent bid to win greater support from settlers and appeal to a right-wing coalition partner.

Netanyahu told the ministers of the move at a meeting where they also decided unanimously to postpone discussing a bill proposing the Israeli annexation of the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim, home to 40,000 Israelis near Jerusalem.

A brief statement issued after the discussion by the ministerial forum known as the Security Cabinet, said work on the bill would be delayed until after Netanyahu meets the new U.S. President, Donald Trump.

Netanyahu held his first phone conversation with the president on Sunday, saying afterwards that the conversation had been “very warm” and that he had been invited to a meeting with Trump in Washington in February.

“Many matters face us. The Israeli-Palestinian issue, the situation in Syria, the Iranian threat,” Netanyahu said in remarks broadcast at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting.

Meanwhile the housing projects approved by the Jerusalem municipality on Sunday are on land that the Palestinians seek as part of a future state and had been taken off the agenda in December at Netanyahu’s request to avoid further censure from Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

However, Israel’s right wing believes that Trump’s attitude towards settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — areas Israel captured in the 1967 war — will be far more supportive than that of Obama.

Jerusalem’s City Hall approved the building permits for more than 560 units in the urban settlements of Pisgat Zeev, Ramat Shlomo and Ramot, areas annexed to Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement that the eight years of the Obama administration had been “difficult with pressure … to freeze construction” but that Israel was now entering a new era.

The Palestinians denounced the move. “We strongly condemn the Israeli decision to approve the construction,” Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters.

In its final weeks, the Obama administration angered the Israeli government by withholding a traditional U.S. veto of an anti-settlement resolution at the United Nations Security Council, enabling the measure to pass.

Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, echoed his condemnation of the world body over its treatment of Israel at her Senate confirmation hearing last week.

Before taking over as president, Trump also pledged to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and has nominated as new U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who is seen as a supporter of settlements.

Israel views all Jerusalem as its capital, but most of the world considers its final status a matter for peace negotiations. The Palestinians have said that an embassy move would kill any prospect for peace. Negotiations broke down in 2014.

Commentators in Israel have said it is too early to tell what Trump’s policy on these matters will actually be although the White House said on Sunday it was in the early stages of talks to fulfill Trump’s pledge.

“We are at the very beginning stages of even discussing this subject,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement.

Most countries consider settlement activity illegal and an obstacle to peace. Israel disagrees, citing a biblical, historical and political connection to the land — which the Palestinians also claim — as well as security interests.

(Additional Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by David Goodman, Greg Mahlich)

Arab Israeli and policeman killed in suspected car ramming attack in southern Israel

Arab Israelis clash with Israeli police

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Police in Israel said an Arab Israeli on Wednesday rammed his car into a group of policemen in the southern Negev region, killing one before being shot dead, though a rights activist who was present disputed it was an attack.

Police said the violence sparked a riot in the village of Umm al-Hiran, where an operation was underway to demolish Bedouin dwellings deemed by a court as having been built illegally on state-owned land.

Police spokeswoman Merav Lapidot said the suspect was a local teacher who “surged towards the forces intending to kill” and that riots erupted after he was shot.

But human rights activist Michal Haramati, who had come to Umm al-Hiran to observe the demolitions, said she witnessed the event and that the driver was not heading towards police when he was shot.

“Suddenly the car started to go down the hill, without control, absolutely,” she told Reuters in English. “The driver was obviously dead by the time that he lost control this way. That’s when he hit the cops.”

Most of Israel’s Bedouin, who predominate in the desert area that accounts for two-thirds of Israel’s territory, are nomadic tribes which have wandered across the Middle East from Biblical times. Arab citizens make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population of eight million, and 200,000 of them are Bedouin.

Bedouin leaders in Negev say Israel has long discriminated against their communities, denying them public funds and services. Half of Israeli Bedouin population live in towns and villages recognized as formal communities by the government. Others live rough, in tents and shacks on patches of desert.

Israeli forces have been particularly wary of car ramming attacks since a wave of Palestinian street assaults began in October 2015.

On Jan. 8, four Israeli soldiers were killed in Jerusalem by a Palestinian who drove his truck into them.

In all, 37 Israelis and two visiting Americans have been killed in the past 15 months, while at least 232 Palestinians have been killed in violence in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the same period. Israel says that at least 158 of them were assailants while others died during clashes and protests.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Israel, Palestinians warned against solo steps harmful to peace

World leaders meet in Paris for Israel-Palestine Peace

By John Irish, Lesley Wroughton and Marine Pennetier

PARIS (Reuters) – Some 70 countries reaffirmed on Sunday that only a two-state solution could resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and warned against any unilateral steps by either side that could prejudge negotiations.

The final communique of a one-day international Middle East peace conference in Paris shied away from explicitly criticizing plans by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to move the U.S Embassy to Jerusalem, although diplomats said the wording sent a “subliminal” message.

Trump has pledged to pursue more pro-Israeli policies and to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, all but enshrining the city as Israel’s capital despite international objections.

Countries including key European and Arab states as well as the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council were in Paris for the conference, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected as “futile”.

Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians were represented.

However, just five days before Trump is sworn in, the meeting was seen as a platform for countries to send a strong signal to the incoming American president that a two-state solution to the conflict could not be compromised on and that unilateral decisions could exacerbate tensions on the ground.

The participants “call on each side … to refrain from unilateral steps that prejudge the outcome of negotiations on final-status issues, including, inter alia, on Jerusalem, borders, security, refugees and which they will not recognize,” the final communique said.

A French diplomatic source said there had been tough negotiations on that paragraph.

“It’s a tortuous and complicated paragraph to pass a subliminal message to the Trump administration,” the diplomat said.

REAFFIRMING RESOLUTION 2334

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters it would have been inappropriate to include the issue of moving the U.S. embassy, it being publicly debated in the United States.

Relations between the United States and Israel have soured during President Barack Obama’s administration, reaching a low point late last month when Washington declined to veto U.N. resolution 2334 demanding an end to Israeli settlements in occupied territory.

Paris has said the meeting did not aim to impose anything on Israel or the Palestinians and that only direct negotiations could resolve the conflict.

The final draft did not go into any details other than reaffirming U.N. Security Council resolutions, including 2334. Diplomats said that had been a source of friction in talks.

“When some are questioning this, it’s vital for us to recall the framework of negotiations. That framework is the 1967 borders and the main resolutions of the United Nations,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters.

Kerry, who abandoned his efforts to broker peace talks in April 2014, told reporters that the meeting had “moved the ball forward.”

“It underscores this is not just one administration’s point of view, this is shared by the international community broadly,” he said.

France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities, has tried to breathe new life into the peace process over the past year and argued that it should not play second fiddle to the war in Syria and the fight against Islamic State militants.

FOLLOW-UP MEETING?

The final statement said interested parties would meet again before year-end.

But Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that “this conference is among the last twitches of the world of yesterday … Tomorrow will look different and that tomorrow is very close.”

Britain added its criticism on Sunday. A Foreign Office statement said the Paris conference risked “hardening positions” given Israel had objected to it and that the U.S. administration is about to change.

Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a sharp rebuke on Israel last month to its U.S. ally when she scolded Secretary of State John Kerry for describing the Israeli government as the most right-wing in Israeli history. The criticism aligned her more closely with Trump.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who said on Saturday that moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem would kill off the peace process, said the Paris meeting would help at stopping “settlement activities and destroying the two-state solution through dictations and the use of force.”

(Additional reporting Lesley Wroughton in Paris and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Tom Heneghan)