Haaretz is reporting the following: France to begin push for UN Security Council resolution on Israeli-Palestinian conflict
France plans to start discussions with partners in the "coming weeks" on a United Nations Security Council resolution to lay out the parameters for ending the Middle East conflict, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Friday.
"I hope that the partners who were reluctant will not be reluctant anymore," said Fabius, referring to the United States, which has traditionally shielded its ally Israel from any action at the United Nations.
"We have said that these parameters have to be defined and recognized by the Security Council and that obviously the two parties have to discuss, but the discussion will be accompanied by an international effort," Fabius told a small group of reporters at the United Nations in New York. "Today nothing has moved forward, still development of settlements, the Palestinians are in a more and more difficult situation and we cannot stay like that," Fabius said.
"We will not forget or ignore what was being said during the campaign and in particular some of the incendiary statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu," German EU lawmaker Reinhard Buetikofer told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile in other news
Israel releases withheld tax revenues to Palestinian Authority
Israel will allow the transfer of hundreds of millions of shekels in tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, the prime minister's bureau announced on Friday.
The revenues, which Israel collects on behalf of the authority, have been withheld for the past four months following the authority's referral of Israel to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for possible war crimes.
The bureau said in its statement that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted the recommendation of Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Shin Bet security service that the revenues be transferred.
We can discuss whether this was an election prop....