by Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, reiterates peace can only be achieved via direct talks • France apologizes for UNESCO resolution that ignored Jewish connection to Temple Mount.
French FM Jean-Marc Ayrault
meets with PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Sunday
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Photo credit: EPA  |
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with
visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Sunday, as France
continues to push ahead with an initiative to hold an international
peace conference in Paris later this month in a bid to revive the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
"This morning, I met with the foreign minister
of France," Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday's cabinet meeting. "I
told him that the scandalous decision passed by UNESCO with French
support that did not recognize the millenia-old connection between the
Jewish people and the Temple Mount casts a shadow on the fairness of any
forum France tries to bring together. He told me that the decision
stemmed from a misunderstanding and that he would personally ensure that
it would not recur.
"I told him that the only way to advance true
peace between us and the Palestinians is via direct negotiations between
us and them, without preconditions. Historical experience shows that is
how we achieved peace with Egypt and that is how we achieved peace with
Jordan. Any other method only pushes peace further away and gives the
Palestinians an escape hatch to avoid dealing with the root of the
conflict -- which is their non-recognition of the State of Israel. They
simply avoid negotiating with us, due to their wish to avoid
[recognizing Israel as the national home of the Jewish people]."
Meanwhile, France has backtracked from the
UNESCO decision approved last month which referred to the Temple Mount
exclusively as "Al-Aqsa mosque," thereby ignoring the Jewish connection
to the site.
Although France's representative to the U.N.
voted in favor of the resolution, French President Francois Hollande and
Prime Minister Manuel Valls have since apologized and condemned the
resolution, calling it "unfortunate."
In a letter to Hollande, Netanyahu expressed
his disapproval of France's support for the resolution and criticized
UNESCO and the French UNESCO representative's "astounding" vote in
support of the resolution.
"UNESCO, the organization responsible for
preserving the world's historical heritage has now sunk so low as to
rewrite a fundamental part of history," Netanyahu wrote. "We have no
illusions about the U.N.'s commitment to the truth or fairness, but in
all honesty, we are stunned to see our French friends raising their
hands to vote for this appalling resolution."
The prime minister added, "The Palestinian
push to receive international approval of their attempts to deny Jewish
history and perpetuate the myth of Israeli aggression on the Temple
Mount is not only false and immoral, it is dangerous."
France is stepping up efforts to drum up
support for its latest diplomatic initiative, seeking a resolution to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within a year. After meeting with
Netanyahu on Sunday, Ayrault was scheduled to meet Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
Israel has repeatedly rejected the French
initiative, but attempts to prevent it from moving forward, including a
request for the United States to pressure France to drop the initiative,
have so far been unsuccessful.
In a speech on Israel's Independence Day last week,
Netanyahu explained Israel's opposition to the French initiative,
saying, "Not only are direct talks the most logical route to peace, they
are the only way to ultimately attain a lasting peace. ... I want to
make it clear to diplomats around the world: I continue to support the
idea of two states for two nations -- a demilitarized Palestinian state
that recognizes the Jewish state. It's about time."
Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=33701
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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