French President François Hollande said he will tell Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas that "everything should be done so that there is direct negotiation between Israel and Palestine,” when he meet him in Paris later this week.
Asked during a press conference at the Elysee Palace Tuesday about France's position on the Palestinian statehood bid for non-member observer status at the UN General Assembly, Hollande declared:"I will tell Mahmud Abbas what I think. Everything must be done so that there is first direct negotiation but the (Palestinian) move might also be a way of pressure for the opening of direct negotiations on an acceptable basis, that’s to say two states. "
"If there is a resolution (to the UN General Assembly, France will look at its content and will a position that it deems best," Hollande said, noting "that our Palestinian friends Palestinians risk retaliatory measures from the US that do not advance the cause of negotiations between Israel and Palestine. "
"We will talk with President Abbas with the idea of ​​advancing the sole objective for us which is negotiation to find a lasting solution to this conflict," he added.
Abbas, who began a tour in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Switzerland, told Tuesday a meeting of EU and Arab foreign ministers in Cairo that he would present on November 29 his bid before the UN General Assembly to upgrade the Palestinian UN status to that of a non-member state.
According to diplomatic sources, Abbas will travel to Paris on Friday.
Observers in the French capital noted that contrary to his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, who campaigned in 2011 for the Palestinian statehood bid, Francois Hollande has changed the approach and doesn’t urge more than a "resumption of negotiations."
During a visit to Paris earlier this month in Paris of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the French president called for "an unconditional resumption of negotiations" between Israelis and Palestinians, and warned against "the temptation for the Palestinian Authority to get at the UN General Assembly of the United Nations what it doesn’t get in negotiations."
If the vote is taken for granted in the UN - a simple majority is required – France and the Europeans in general don’t want to offend neither the Americans nor the Israelis. "
The question is on the agenda of a meeting of the 27 EU foreign ministers next Monday in Brussels. But EU diplomatic sources don’t expect the meeting to come out with a common position on the Palestinian bid as the issue is “divisive”.
Israel believes that at least six EU member states will support the Palestinians: Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, Spain, Belgium and Ireland.
On Tuesday in Cairo, European and Arab League Foreign Ministers failed to jointly endorse the Palestinian unilateral statehood bid, calling instead for a negotiated two state solution.
In their final declaration, they “called for the removal of all obstacles that prevent an immediate resumption of negotiations between the parties as well as the resolution of all issues related …achieving a solution of two States living side by side in peace and security.’
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman held meetings over the weekend in Vienna with Israeli ambassadors in Europe to discuss how best to hammer home their message to European governments that the Palestinian bid was harmful to the peace process.
Israel has urged the Palestinians to immediately resume negotiations rather than seek unilateral recognition at the UN.
On Friday, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said these efforts would do little for the Palestinians.
“Action of this kind is not going to take them any closer to having what they really want and need, which is a functioning, independent state living at peace with Israel,” Nuland said.