The Paris summit and the elephant in the room

In a last-ditch attempt to revive the stalled Middle Eastern peace process, as many as 70 countries gathered on Sunday in Paris and made it clear that the only solution to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is establishing an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

Not surprisingly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considered the gathering “useless”. 

If history is any guide, Netanyahu will launch a campaign against the conference while waiting for the inauguration of the next US president, Donald Trump, who pledged to stand up to any pressure put on Israel, making Netanyahu feel that he will not be isolated for too long.

Netanyahu quite often shrugged off any international efforts to help solve the conflict that were not in line with his policies. 

Besides, Israelis often describe any international forum that tries to push for a just solution to the conflict as “hostile”.

While the mere meeting of so many countries, including all European nations, is encouraging, Israelis are very unlikely to budge.

The final communiqué of the Paris conference is not binding in the first place. And as long as the international community has no teeth and cannot place a price tag on Israel, there is no good reason for any Israeli prime minister to comply with the conditions of peace and stir a domestic backlash.

That is being said, the conference was directed at the new American administration. 

Trump was the elephant in the conference room. 

The question that hovered in the air was whether Trump’s policies will help Netanyahu continue with his intransigent policies that only diminish the likelihood of the realisation of the two-state solution.

Explicit in Trump’s statements is his irrational bias in favour of the Israeli right wing. 

His pledge to move the America embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; his appointment of David Friedman (a well-known supporter of settlements) as ambassador to Israel; his disagreement with Kerry’s speech on the peace process; his response to the UN Security Council resolution on the illegality of the settlement; and the settlers’ rejoice after Trump won the election should sound alarm bells in many countries across the world.

French President François Hollande underlined that the conference was meant to convey a clear message to the new American administration about the consensus of the international community with regards to the two-state solution. 

The expected Trump failure to commit himself to the only acceptable game could aggravate the already charged atmosphere in the occupied territories.

It remains to be seen how Trump is going to address the Arab-Israeli conflict. Recently, his staff stressed that advancing the peace process will top Trump’s agenda. 

But saying is one thing and doing is a totally different thing. Besides, it is not clear yet if Trump’s staff has any clue about what it takes to help advance the peace process.

The importance of the Paris conference is — and herein lies the crux of the matter — that it puts the new American administration on notice that ignoring the issue could inflame the Middle East in years to come.

In other words, the two-state solution is the only way to go about this conflict, and short of achieving it, the entire region runs the risk of further degenerating in anarchy.

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