The lower house of the French parliament is set to vote today/Tuesday on a non-binding resolution tabled by the governing Socialist Party which “invites the French government to use the recognition of the state of Palestine as an instrument to gain a definitive resolution of the conflict.”
According to various sources, the resolution, which comes after a debate in the National Assembly on Friday on this issue, is likely to be adopted by the lawmakers despite efforts by the pro-Israel camp to avoid such a vote.
While it is non-binding, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius Frnce has in the past already made known that it plans to recognize a Palestinian nation “when the time comes,” arguing that a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict logically implies recognition of Palestine.
The vote comes a similar resolution was approved by the British House of Commons in October and by the Spanish Cortes in November. Sweden became in October the first EU member state to formally reognize a ‘’State of Palestine.’’
Last week, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told MPs the United Nations Security Council was working on a resolution to relaunch and conclude peace talks.
“A deadline of two years is the one most often mentioned and the French government can agree with this figure,” he said.
Fabius also said France was prepared to host international talks to drive the peace bid forward.
“An international conference could be organized — France is prepared to take the initiative on this — and in these talks, recognition (of the Palestinian state) would be an instrument … for the definitive resolution of the conflict,” he said.
“If these efforts fail. If this last attempt at a negotiated settlement does not work, then France will have to do its duty and recognize the state of Palestine without delay and we are ready to do that,” stressed Fabius, without fixing a deadline for such a recognition.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned France that this would be a “grave mistake.”
“This is what is going to produce peace? To ask Israel to put the suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in the hands of Islamic militants? This is irresponsible. It’s not conducive to peace,” he said.“In fact, it hardens the Palestinian positions because it tells them, you get a state — which will be used to attack Israel — you don’t have to give anything. I think this is a terribly misguided position.”
Roger Cukierman, president of CRIF, the umbrella group representing French Jewish organizations, called on French Jews to refrain from protests against the parliament vote, saying “what is needed is calm, dialogue and negotiation.”
Last Friday, some 200 pro-Israel protesters gathered near the parliament in Paris to protest the proposed resolution.
French Jewish MP Meyer Habib, a former CRIF official who represents French citizens in eight countries around the Mediterranean, including Israel, said voting to recognize Palestine would be a “grave error — morally, strategically and politically.”
“It will remove France from any position in which it can participate in any negotiations in the Middle East,” he told The Times of Israel. “Passing this resolution is akin to handing a prize to terrorism, to legitimize terrorism.”
Unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state at the current juncture will invite more anti-Semitic attacks such as the March 2012 Toulouse shootings or the May 2014 shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, he said.