Zionist Union leader MK Isaac Herzog met on Friday, January 22, at the Elysée Palace with French President François Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, presenting his new diplomatic plan for Israel’s separation from Palestinian villages surrounding Jerusalem. The meeting in Paris took place on the backdrop of a French Foreign Ministry statement released on Friday morning which condemned Israeli expropriation of farmland in the West Bank, and the decision earlier in the week by EU ministers that all agreements with Israel are not applicable beyond the Green Line.

MK Herzog and PM Netanyahu (TV footage)

Herzog told Hollande that “attempts to reach a Palestinian state now are unrealistic. A Palestinian state cannot be established currently because the Palestinians have no leadership that controls the whole territory and that could lead such a move.’’ Herzog added that “first we must separate between Israelis and Palestinians, this is what all efforts must focus on; a separation that will be accompanied by security and economic measures, in a way that will bring about calm on the ground.’’

Referring to the latest decision by the EU and to the UN resolution proposed by France on Palestinian statehood, Herzog noted that “such decisions only reward terrorism and the BDS movement. They nullify the possibility of advancing regional moves.” He called upon France to stop advancing any international resolutions which harmed Israel.

According to the Communist weekly Zu Haderech “The opposition must not give up on a peace alternative giving the banal excuse taken from the political right that there is no one to talk with. By doing so, “Herzog is doing the dirty work for a coalition being pulled by its hair by the far right PM Benjamin Netanyhau, Bayit Yehudi MK Bezalel Smotrich, and Likud MK Oren Hazan.” The Hebrew-language Communist weekly concluded by slamming Herzog “for playing into Netanyahu’s hands.”