Israel Matzav: France backs off advance recognition for 'Palestine'

France backs off advance recognition for 'Palestine'

French President Nicolai Sarkozy has backed off a suggestion by his Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, that France recognize a 'Palestinian state' before the 'Palestinians' start negotiations with Israel.

Middle East peace talks must be restarted to avoid a “catastrophe,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Monday after meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Paris, stepping back from the idea that the EU should recognize a Palestinian state before an agreement is signed.

“If there are no talks... we take the risk, the international community, of a third intifada,” Sarkozy said at a joint news conference with Abbas. “If we do nothing it will be a catastrophe.”

However, Sarkozy backed off of the notion of declaring a Palestinian state before borders with Israel are defined, as suggested over the weekend by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

Kouchner himself also seemed to backtrack, co-writing an op-ed Monday in Le Monde with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos in which they said that Europe would “collectively recognize a Palestinian state” at the end of the diplomatic process.

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“Europe needs to step in today and give guarantees of political and financial security for Israelis and Palestinians to help overcome the ‘risks of peace,’” they wrote. Kouchner and Moratinos wrote that the indirect “proximity talks” now being discussed needed to be augmented by a timeline, and a “mechanism” that would accompany the talks and “learn from the lessons of the past.”

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Sarkozy, meanwhile, said at his press conference with Abbas, in which the two men made a strong display of solidarity, that they agreed on the ingredients needed to create a Palestinian state while guaranteeing Israeli security and border security.

“Everybody knows the terms of a definitive peace accord,” Sarkozy said. These include the two-state solution with Jerusalem as the capital of each, a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, land exchanges and talks on the status of Palestinian refugees.

If 'everyone knows' why hasn't it happened in the last sixteen years of 'negotiations'? Obviously, because what 'everyone knows' is wrong and because there are other open points that are not part of what 'everyone knows.'

Israel Matzav: France backs off advance recognition for 'Palestine'