A last-minute Kerry decision

Once again, Israel has managed to escape scrutiny thanks to a last-minute American intervention from Secretary of State John Kerry.

His ploy was that the date of the meeting suggested by France was not convenient to him.

For many weeks, French President Francis Hollande has been calling for an international conference, intended to be held in late May in Paris, to relaunch peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.

But no official from either the Palestinian Authority or Israel was invited among the participants, high-ranking officials from some 30 countries, in order to launch guidelines for a peace settlement between the two parties in conflict for over five decades.

Unlike the Palestinians, the Israelis were not supportive of this expanded undertaking.

And now, at the last minute, Kerry has reportedly told his French hosts that the timing was not convenient for him.

The French government has reportedly grown frustrated with the absence of a movement towards achieving the two-state solution since the collapse of the US-brokered talks in 2014. If the status quo continues there are fears that the region will witness even more turmoil.

Israel has repeatedly declared it is not willing to support an expanded international conference, probably for fear of international condemnation and hoping to get more time to grab additional Palestinian territories where some half-a-million illegal Israeli settlers live without any effective condemnation from key Western powers.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority last week, raised slight hopes by saying that the conference will take place “in the course of the summer”.

The Israeli government is on record against the projected meeting, and more particularly against recent French action in support of a UNESCO resolution that did not acknowledge Jewish ties to Jerusalem and of Palestinian membership in UNESCO.

The potential participants in a summit would include the Middle East Quartet — the US, the EU, the UN and Russia — the Arab League, the members of the UN Security Council and about 20 other countries.

In turn, the Palestinians remain hopeful that the projected French conference will bring about new “parameters for the promised talks”, as Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah declared.

Citing the case of the international community coming together to reach a peaceful settlement for the Iranian issue, he asked: “Why not Palestine?”

Troublesome these days are the ongoing American elections, where the two presumptive candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are staunch supporters of Israel.

The Republican front runner is on record as having said recently that he supports Israel’s building settlements in occupied West Bank.

Clinton, on the other hand, decried her presumptive challenger, saying: “We need steady hands, not a president who says he is neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything is negotiable. Well, my friends, Israel’s security is not negotiable.”

More rattling lately have been Israel’s expectations regarding US financial aid, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to secure before January 2017, when Barack Obama’s term ends, even though crucial disagreement remain unresolved.

Netanyahu, fearing that Trump will be the next president, believes that signing the deal with Obama, a Democrat, will assure all that Israel is supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

The presidential deal, valued at $30 billion, expires at the end of 2018.

Obama is willing to give Israel $40 billion on condition that Israel will not seek more financial assistance during the next 10 years.

Aid from the US equals a quarter of the Israeli military budget.

What may influence the new America administration is the Pew Research Centre’s revelation that Democrats are four times more likely than Republicans to sympathise with the Palestinians, rather than with Israelis, and sympathy for the Palestinians among Americans is growing.

Empathy with the Palestinians, according to a survey published in The Times of Israel earlier this month, “is up most sharply among the youngest American adults, growing threefold over the last decade”.

The survey adds: “Some 27 per cent of millennials say they are more sympathetic to the Palestinians than Israel; in 2006 the figure was 9 per cent. The share of those favouring Israel has held steady at 43 per cent.”

The survey also shows that “there is more optimism among Americans that a two-state solution can be achieved by the Israelis and Palestinians than scepticism that it cannot”.

The writer is a Washington-based columnist.