(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Dore Gold - On January 15, the president of France is convening a major international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with some 70 countries expected to attend. Israel has been very firm that it will not attend and that it objects to the whole idea of this conference. Israel has learned through many years of negotiations and diplomacy that the only way we resolve our differences with our neighbors is by sitting face-to-face at the peace table. That's how we reached peace with Egypt in 1979 when Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel sat with Anwar Sadat. That is exactly how we reached peace with Jordan when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sat face-to-face with King Hussein. That is what works: direct negotiations. What is being planned in Paris gets us away from those direct talks at the peace table into a very complex world of multilateral negotiations with various European players. That's not how we made peace in the past and that's not how we will make peace in the future. To end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we have to have reconciliation between the two sides. You can only get to this kind of understanding if the sides are really talking to each other. The writer, former director-general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israeli Ambassador to the UN, is president of the Jerusalem Center.
2017-01-09 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive