Israel summons French envoy after colleague's 'apartheid' remark

Jerusalem. Israel has summoned the French envoy and reprimanded her after the outgoing French ambassador to the United States said Israel's West Bank occupation amounted to "apartheid," the foreign ministry said Tuesday.

In a retirement interview with The Atlantic magazine published on April 19, Gerard Araud discussed the yet-unpublished plan the United States has been working on to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Araud said Israel would seek to avoid giving Palestinians a state or Israeli citizenship.

"So they will have to make it official, which is we know the situation, which is an apartheid," Araud told The Atlantic.

"There will be officially an apartheid state. They are in fact already."

The foreign ministry summoned French ambassador to Israel Helene Le Gal on Monday for "a verbal reprimand" over Araud's remark "in which he addressed Israel as an ‘apartheid state’," spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement.

"We firmly protested the remark," he said.

Araud, who served as France's ambassador to Israel from 2003 to 2006, responded on Twitter to the reports of Le Gal's dressing-down, saying he was "referring to the West Bank" and not Israel.

He said Israel's 52-year occupation of the West Bank and its construction and expansion of settlements had imposed two separate laws for Israelis and Palestinians "on the same territory with one people dominating the other."

"No, Israel itself is obviously not an apartheid state," he said.

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been frozen since a US peace push collapsed in 2014 amid mutual recriminations.

US President Donald Trump's administration has been working on a peace proposal, with Jared Kushner -- Trump's son-in-law and point-man for the issue -- saying it would be presented after Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month which ends in early June.

Israel occupied the West Bank in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ahead of an April 9 general election, in which he won a fifth term, that he planned to annex Israeli settlements in the territory.

If done on a large-scale, the move could effectively end remaining hopes for a two-state solution to the conflict.

The settlements are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state. (AFP)