The Conference for Peace in the Middle East, which opened in Paris Sunday, has reminded all of us that the Palestinian question remains high on the agenda of the international community. Seventy countries and various international and regional organizations participated in the conference, which was hosted by France to help find a solution to the long-drawn conflict. This was yet another sincere attempt at peace based on the two-state formula. But peace continues to elude the region, Israeli inflexibility being the main obstacle. Israel continues to pursue its expansionist policy with its settlements program, in scant disregard to international resolutions against it. It has remained obstinate in the face of growing global condemnation against its intransigent posturing. Israel simply holds no qualms about disregarding every move towards peace, most glaring of them being the Arab Peace Initiative floated some 15 years ago. The Initiative offered realistic solutions to the Middle East problem, but Israel adopted a self-centered stance, without any consideration for the Palestinian standpoint. Even the French invitation to the conference extended to Israel was rejected by it downright primarily because it felt the conference was biased in favor of the Palestinians. The truth, of course, was that the sole purpose of the conference was to find a solution to the problem based on the two-state solution. It is by now an established fact that Israel will never respond to any call for peace. It somehow holds this disillusion that peace would mean its own extinction. Its ambitions to expand the territories it holds even further are too lofty to enable any attempts at peace to succeed.
