BICOM

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Paris today where he will meet several heads of government and state on the side-lines of a climate conference, including France’s President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The conference, COP21, has become an opportunity for the world to show its solidarity with France following the Paris terror attacks earlier this month. Netanyahu will address the conference itself. However, he will additionally sit down for one-on-one meetings with the likes of Hollande and Putin, whose countries are taking an increasingly prominent role in Syria. Netanyahu will also meet India’s Prime Minister Narandra Modi, who recently visited Israel, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. He will hold first meetings with recently-elected leaders, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Polish Prime Minister, Beata Szydło.

Outlining his Paris schedule to his cabinet yesterday, Netanyahu added that the leaders of Greece and Cyprus had both visited Israeli earlier this month, saying, “Whoever spoke about the collapse of our relations with the US, with the world in general and with the Arab world in particular, is mistaken.” In addition, Netanyahu confirmed reports last week that Israel will soon be “opening … an office in Abu Dhabi” for the first time, as a mission to the International Renewable Energy Agency, based in the UAE capital.

Netanyahu also announced yesterday that he had instructed Israel’s Foreign Ministry to conduct a reassessment of the involvement of the European Union (EU) in the diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinians. He instructed that contacts with the EU on the issue be suspended in the meantime, although relations with member states will be unaffected. The decision was a response to the EU’s recent issuing of guidelines which instructed member states to separately label consumer goods which are produced in the West Bank. Israeli officials have described the labelling guidelines as discriminatory and likely to encourage an atmosphere of boycotts.