Hillary Clinton to Juppé: “We’ll Wait and See”

The French idea to reopen peace negotiations in the Middle East with a conference in Paris received a polite yet cold reception in Washington this Monday. Although Alain Juppé repeated many times that “the status quo is untenable”* and emphasized that his proposition is a “transfer” of Obama’s recent speech, the Americans evidently prefer their own script to the French decal. “So right now we are still in a wait and see attitude,” explained Hillary Clinton after the meeting with her French counterpart, “because we don’t yet have any assurance from either party that they would return to negotiations”.

Upon leaving the State Department, Alain Juppé estimated there was no more than a “1 in 10″* chance of putting together this conference between now and the end of July, as he had hoped for in coming to Washington after his visits to Jerusalem and Ramallah. “But even that [1 in 10 chance], we must take it, we must seize it,”* assured the French minister, who still has to plead his case before the representatives of the Jewish community in New York this Tuesday. Nothing’s cut and dried, or so French diplomats want to believe. To date, only the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has given him a yes, with reservations. Benyamin Netanyahu has “withheld” his response, and wants to consult his “American friends.” The fact that the latter have announced their position as being one of “wait and see” doesn’t, in any case, put much pressure on the Israelis to grasp this newly outstretched hand.

As a European diplomat explained, “The Americans are furious that someone is trying to depose them from the peace process.” Forced to be more tactful, on account of his post, Alain Juppé suggests, “They don’t want to get involved in something that may not succeed.” Alongside Clinton, as with Netanyahu last week, the French minister also attempted humor: “I said there is no risk: If it works out, it will be classified as Obama’s success; if it fails it will be known as a French failure.” For the time being and subject to an Israeli jump-start, we are more or less in the second category.

*Editor’s Note: These quotes, though accurately translated, could not be verified.