TEL AVIV – The Palestinian Authority and the French government have been pressuring the Obama administration to submit a plan to the United Nations that would impose guidelines for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, a PA official told Breitbart Jerusalem.
The plan would seek to usurp United States’ Middle East policy after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
“In addition, our goal is to organize an international peace summit in France in December. We expect Israel to boycott it, but we want the US to rally the entire community of nations around it,” the official said.
The source said that the Obama State Department supports the French-Palestinian initiative, “but the President’s position is still unclear. They tend to be against, but there’s still a chance.”
He said that the participation of an American delegation would be enough to satisfy the Palestinians.
“The summit would send a strong international message instead of the exclusively American one that has been heard recently,” he said. “The Quartet hasn’t really been active, and Israel takes advantage of it to step up settlement activity. That’s why a new initiative or at least reiterating a strong international stance would be enough to pave the way for future negotiations between us and the Israelis.”
While the PA has been keen to support unilateral action targeting Israel at UN, Abbas and the PA have refused to come to the bargaining table despite numerous Israeli offers to jump start talks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the unprecedented steps of freezing Jewish West Bank construction and releasing Palestinian terrorists from prisons as “gestures” to bring the PA to the bargaining table but to no avail.
There has been speculation that in his final weeks in office, Obama may back UN initiatives to impose a timetable or guidelines for Israeli-Palestinian talks. Netanyahu has warned against such a move, arguing it “will harden the Palestinian positions, it will push peace back, push peace back decades.”
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.