French President Francois Hollande reassured Israeli leaders during his visit to their country that France will not let Iran develop nuclear weapons and that French and European sanctions will remain in place as long as Iran gives no guarantees about abandoning its quest for nuclear arms. The remarks will certainly please Benjamin Netanyahu, who gave a warm reception to his French guest. But the Israeli prime minister also described any coming first-stage agreement with Iran on the nuclear issue as something bad, because Iran will take advantage of it to see sanctions lifted, so that it can continue to develop a nuclear bomb. The P5+1 countries (which include France and the United States) that are negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program believe that Iranian Minister Jawad Zarif will return to Geneva on Wednesday to agree to the P5+1 countries' joint statement, and that the first-stage agreement for six months to test Iran's intentions will be reached. Then, European sanctions will quickly be lifted, including those on the freezing of Iranian assets and banning the export of petrochemical products. Other sanction will also be affected, but not those on essential oil supplies for the Iranian economy, which will remain in place until it is verified that Iran has truly halted its nuclear military program. Hollande wanted to reassure Israel. He said that he would keep sanctions in place as long as there was no verification of the halt of Iran's nuclear program. But he kept this promise cryptic, without specifying which sanctions he was talking about, and in which stage. The truth is that he will not block a first-stage agreement with Iran. Before his trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories, Hollande spoke with President Barack Obama by telephone, and they agreed on a joint test that would be endorsed in Geneva during the most recent ministerial round of talks. This test was supposed to be approved by Iran. But the truth is that the P5+1 countries, under Obama's umbrella, are determined to reach an agreement with Iran in order to open a new page in relations with the Iranian regime. Obama wants to end his second term by returning to a normalization of ties with Tehran, supported by big corporations and a segment of Jews in the US and even Israel. They all remember the historical ties between Iran and Israel and have no objection to seeing them return, albeit corrected. But the Knesset and Prime Minister Netanyahu are of the opposite view; they are totally opposed to the American policy and are relying on Hollande to halt progress on a first-stage agreement with Iran. But the French president will not do so; he is moving ahead with the agreement, along with the other P5+1 countries. The ball is now in Iran's court, even if Hollande's visit to Israel succeeded in reassuring Netanyahu and his team about France's determination. If Iran accepts the text presented to it, then a first-stage agreement for six months will be signed; this is what Netanyahu described as bad. As for the Palestinian-Israeli issue, Hollande said in the Knesset, addressing a hard-line right-wing majority, that Israel must halt settlements, and that there should be peace between two states existing side by side, with Jerusalem as the capital of both. He asked the Israelis and the Palestinians to undertake initiatives. The real question that should be asked is: what more in the way of initiatives can the Palestinians offer? The Palestinian Authority has already offered all of the concessions that have been asked of it, but settlements have not stopped despite the temporary freeze on some housing units. The situation of the Palestinians is dire everywhere, especially in Jerusalem. They suffer from mistreatment by the Israelis, who are going ahead with their plans to Judaicize the city, with no deterrent from the Arabs or the rest of the world. The Palestinians also suffer from the PA's scant attention to their fate, and to their limited capacities. They suffer on all sides from difficult conditions, despite all of the talk that Jerusalem should be the capital of both countries. What is taking place in Jerusalem is very far from such a goal. Whoever says that Jerusalem is the capital for three religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – quickly realizes that this is just talk. The course of Judaicization of the city is crushing, in the absence of any true Arab deterrent. Hollande, and before him Nicolas Sarkozy, affirmed the foundations of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but what is taking place on the ground has nothing to do with these foundations. It is difficult to imagine the establishment of a Palestinian state on the borders of an Israeli Jewish state that exercises control over everything, with blind support from the US. Jerusalem is surrounded by settlements and Palestinian civil society, whose representatives met with Hollande in the Church of St. Anne strongly expressed their anger over the mistreatment by the Israelis. Hollande's visit had the aspects of long-standing French policies on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, but the reality on the ground contradicts these foundations.
