国际英语新闻:Israel blasts Paris peace summit as "missed opportunity"

JERUSALEM, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Israel slammed on Friday the French-led conference in Paris aiming at reviving the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

A statement released by the Israeli Foreign Ministry following the half-day meeting charged that only direct negotiations could lead to a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"The conference in Paris was a missed opportunity," read the statement.

The ministry accused the international community of "yielding" to the demands of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"Instead of urging Abu Mazen (Abbas) to respond to calls from Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) to start direct negotiations immediately and without preconditions, the international community responded to Abu Mazen's demand, allowing him to keep avoiding direct bilateral negotiations without preconditions," the ministry said.

"It will go down in history that the conference in Paris simply resulted in hardened Palestinian positions and distant peace," the ministry charged.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, welcomed the meeting as a "significant step" against Israel's "apartheid policies in occupied Palestine."

Foreign ministers of more than 20 Western and Arab countries, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, attended the summit. Israeli and Palestinian officials were not invited.

The gathering failed to achieve an agreement about the French proposal to bring Israelis and Palestinians for an international peace conference by the autumn.

Instead, the meeting concluded with a closing communique welcoming the "prospects" of such a conference later this year, without elaborating. The ministers also released a call for "fully ending the Israeli occupation."

Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War and has been controlling it ever since despite international condemnation.

The last round of peace talks took place between July 2013 and April 2014 with the mediation of the U.S., and ended abruptly without results.

International calls to restart peace talks come amid an ongoing wave of violence which started in mid-September and claimed the lives of 205 Palestinians and 28 Israelis. Enditem