France has reportedly postponed an international Mideast peace conference which it intended to convene on December 21 in Paris until the beginning of January.

“The conference was surprisingly postponed because they France said it had not completed all preparations…and some parties requested its postponement in order to participate in it,” the Palestinian Ambassador to France Salman Harfi said.

As part of the French initiative, 25 foreign ministers from the US, EU, and the Arab world attended a first meeting in Paris in early June without te participation of Israel and the Palestinians. They reaffirmed their commitments to achieving a two-state solution.

Since this meeting, which officially kicked off the French initiative, three groups have been tasked with examining avenues to propel the peace process forward.

One group has looked at building the institutions needed for the establishment of a Palestinian state; another has studied the economic incentives peace would bring for those involved, in particular for the European Union; while a third group worked on enhancing the participation of civil society in the process.

The proposals of the three groups will be examined during the next conference.

Paris is also reportedly examining different avenues for conveying the findings to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, either on the sidelines of the conference or by sending representatives to Ramallah and Jerusalem.

Israel has said it will not attend the summit, preferring direct talks instead, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu going so far last week as to offer to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for negotiations in Paris if French President Francois Hollande cancels the confab.

“We supports bilateral talks and we know that the only way to make progress is by talking directly to the Palestinians, not introducing a multiplicity of factors,” Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said. “If we participated in such a conference, we would have to cater to the interests of all the countries participating in the initiative, and some of those countries have anti-Israel positions. There’s absolutely no reason we should make those countries partners in this process,” he told The Jerusalem.

On Monday, France’s new ambassador to Israel Hélène Le Gal said the conference would not contain any novel ideas on how to solve the Middle East conflict, but is mainly intended to prevent the issue from disappearing amid other global crises.

“What we propose is nothing new but we are trying to keep the subject on the agenda and not letting it down because there are other crises in the world,” she said. “We continue to propose things and it’s always in a very good spirit toward Israel.”