France postpones Mideast peace conference: Ambassador

By Anees Barghouti

RAMALLAH, Palestine

The French authorities have informed the Palestinian leadership that a planned Mideast peace conference -- initially slated for later this month -- has been postponed to January, a Palestinian official said Wednesday.

"France has informed us that the Middle East conference, which had been scheduled for Dec. 21, has been postponed to January of next year," the Voice of Palestine radio station quoted Palestinian Ambassador to France Salman al-Herfi as saying.

Al-Herfi said that official invitations to the event would soon be sent out to both Israeli and Palestinian officials.

"If Israel refuses to participate, the conference will not be attended by both sides," he added.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected an invitation from French President Francois Hollande to attend the conference in Paris, which is intended to kick-start Palestine-Israel peace talks.

Talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators collapsed in 2014 over Israel's refusal to release a group of Palestinian political prisoners despite earlier pledges to do so.

Since then, all attempts to revive the moribund peace process have failed, due mainly to Israel's continued insistence on building Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian negotiators say all settlement-building activity must stop before a comprehensive peace deal can be hammered out.