Paris is hosting Mideast peace talks without Israelis, Palestinians, or the Trump team

Secretary of State John Kerry meets with diplomats in Paris

(Image credit: Bertrand Guay/Getty Images)

last updated 16 January 2017

On Sunday, diplomats from 70 nations — not including representatives of Israel, Palestine, or the incoming Donald Trump administration — met in Paris "to officially restate their commitment to the two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The goal was to demonstrate to Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the breadth of international backing of a Palestinian state, but Netanyahu dismissed the Paris meeting as "futile" and "rigged" against Israel. "This conference is among the last twitches of the world of yesterday," he said. "Tomorrow will look different and that tomorrow is very close."

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry joined the talks, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas initially planned to attend before his schedule changed. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault at the conference echoed Abbas' Saturday critique of Trump's promise to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. "When you are president of the United States, you cannot take such a stubborn and such a unilateral view on this issue," he argued. "You have to try to create the conditions for peace."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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