Restarting a process

France seems determined to push for the adoption of a UN Security Council resolution aiming to revive Palestinian-Israeli peace prospects.

The French initiative, announced Friday by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at the UN headquarters in New York, comes soon after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that there will be no Palestinian state as long as he is the Israeli leader.

Paris is also acting after the rejection, in December, by the UN Security Council of a resolution that would have set a deadline for reaching a peace deal and creating a Palestinian state.

“I hope the partners that were reluctant will be less reluctant,” said Fabius, stressing that “it is necessary to move forward to have a solution to this problem.”

If the international community lived up to its commitments and principles, imposing peace and creating a state for the Palestinians would not be that difficult.

But knowing how the strings are pulled in international politics where Israel is concerned, one is rather sceptical about the outcome of peace talks, if they are revived.

The US cautiously said “we’re not going to get ahead of any decisions about what the United States would do with regard to potential action at the UN Security Council”, while declaring that it will continue to engage with key stakeholders “to find a way forward that advances the interest we and others share in a two-state solution”.

Other permanent members of UN Security Council have yet to comment on the French proposal.

While France’s good intentions aim to breathe new life into the stalled peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis, the issue is not the adoption of yet another resolution. There is already a long stack of these on the shelves of the UN archives.

What the Palestinians need now is the start of a process of implementation of all resolutions adopted by the Security Council, starting with 242 of 1967, which specifically called for the Israeli withdrawal from all the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Why search for new bases for the resolution of this decades-old problem when there is already a sufficient number that awaits implementation?