The most remarkable thing about the Paris Middle East conference that convenes on May 30 will surely be the absence of Israel and Palestine. It will be a two-state solution conference without the two states. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would have loved to participate, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is glad to stay at home surrounded by the yes men (and women) of his cabinet. The last thing on the Israeli prime minister’s mind at this point is any progress on a two-state solution. He swore before the last March 2015 Israeli elections that no Palestinian state will be established during his tenure and he intends to keep his promise to his loyal constituency.

At their Élysée meeting on April 15, Abbas told French President François Hollande that he fully supports the French initiative. According to a senior Palestinian Authority official who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Abbas is closely coordinating with the Arab League and Egypt regarding the upcoming conference. The Palestinians are determined to achieve the creation of a new international platform for a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines with a reasonable timeline for the establishment of statehood.

The Paris conference may also mark a turning point for the Palestinians regarding the attitude of the Arab countries toward their cause. According to the senior Palestinian source, there has been much disappointment in Ramallah with other Arab governments, whose attention over these last few months has mostly been focused on the Iran deal and the fight against the Islamic State. Now, the Palestinian leadership believes that the French initiative could redirect the attention of Egypt and of the Gulf states back toward the Palestinian issue.

The Palestinian official told Al-Monitor that the leadership in Ramallah considers the French initiative and international support of the conference the last opportunity for diplomacy to stall an armed intifada. The official expressed concern that failure now could endanger the moderate policies of Abbas, risk Palestinian security cooperation with Israel and perhaps even threaten the survival of the Abbas regime. “We have come to a ‘now or never’ point. The Obama administration must decide to give a chance to diplomacy first at the Paris conference, and thereafter at the [UN] Security Council,” he argued. Indeed, it is the Palestinians' intention to ask France and Egypt to put on the table a Security Council resolution based on the outcomes of the Paris conference.