BICOM

The outgoing US Secretary of State has confirmed that he will attend Sunday’s peace conference in Paris as one of his final acts in office.

An announcement by US spokesman John Kirby said that Kerry will travel to Paris, before visiting London and the World Economic Forum in Davos. Representatives from around 70 countries are set to attend the Paris conference, which France says will aims to generate progress between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), although representatives from neither side have been invited to attend.

Israel’s leaders have chosen not to support the conference, due to concerns that multilateral forums will further discourage the PA from direct talks with Israel. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned last week that declarations made in Paris could form the basis of a new UN Security Council resolution critical of Israel.

In a separate development, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has sent incoming US President Donald Trump a letter, warning him of the consequences should he make good on his campaign pledge to relocate the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa says: “Abbas told Trump that such [a] move will likely have [a] disastrous impact on the peace process, on the two-state solution and on the stability and security of the entire region, since Israel’s decision to annex East Jerusalem contradicts with international law.”

The same report says that Abbas has sent similar letters to other world leaders “asking them to spare no effort to prevent moving the US embassy to Jerusalem”.

Haaretz says that “there has been a growing sense among the Palestinian leadership that Trump is serious about moving the embassy,” and that it was not simply campaign rhetoric.

Israel’s Channel Two reports that something of a solution is in the offing, with the US Embassy set to remain in Tel Aviv, while Trump’s pick as US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, could work out of Jerusalem.