COMMENTARY
French Set Up Obama-Israel Fight
by Jonathan S. Tobin
January 31, 2016

At first glance, the announcement on Friday by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius that Paris will recognize Palestine if a new round of peace talks it has proposed fails isn’t that alarming. As the Times of Israel points out in an analysis, such a move would make it the 137th nation to recognize a state of Palestine that is, as of the moment, a legal fiction rather than an actual sovereign country. Similar declarations from other European nations have done nothing for the Palestinian people and have, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pointed out again, only hurt the cause of peace. But as numbingly familiar as the ritual of endorsing Palestine might be, this gesture may present a serious danger to Israel’s international position in 2016. READ MORE