Benjamin Netanyahu labels Middle East peace process 'rigged' and refuses to take part in Paris talks

Israeli prime minister condemns conference scheduled for later this week as ‘last gasp of the past before the future sets in’

Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday’s conference would be rigged to ’push peace backwards’

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called talks aimed at reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process scheduled to take place in Paris later this week “rigged” against Israel.

Announcing that his country would not participate in the negotiations due to start Sunday, Mr Netanyahu said the conference would be rigged by the Palestinians and the French in such a way to “push peace backwards”.

“[The conference] is not going to obligate us. It’s a relic of the past, it’s a last gasp of the past before the future sets in,” he said during a public meeting on Thursday.

French President François Hollande who spearheaded the initiative, said that the talks are aimed at strengthening the international community’s support for a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

They are supposed to address energy, transport and infrastructure issues.

The meetings will be attended by representatives from 72 different countries, but, although the governing Palestinian Authority welcomed the French initiative, no Palestinian officials will be in attendance.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to engage directly with the Israeli administration unless settlement construction in the West Bank over the 1967 Green Line – viewed by the international community as illegal – is ended first.

“Peace will be achieved by Israelis and Palestinians, and nobody else. Only bilateral negotiations can succeed,” Mr Hollande said in a speech to diplomats on Thursday.

The prevailing mood in Israeli politics has shifted to the right in recent years. Several high level politicians are publicly against the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Public support for a two-state solution among Israeli Jews has also waned in the light of renewed violence since the 2014 Gaza War, and dozens of knife and gun attacks in Israel’s cities.

Israel’s most loyal ally, the US, is also set to become far friendlier to Israeli interests once President-elect Donald Trump takes office on 20 January.

His pick for US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is in favour of recognising Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, and moving the US Embassy building to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Palestinian Authority officials have warned such stances will be detrimental to the peace process, and security analysts say they could spark future violence.

Mr Trump also signified on the campaign trail that he would seek to “undo” the Iran nuclear deal struck by Barack Obama’s administration which eased Western relations with the Middle Eastern country in return for changes to its nuclear programme.

The state is committed to the destruction of Israel.

The last round of US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down in 2014, although late last year the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders had said they are willing to meet in Moscow at an undisclosed date.