French Ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, has said that Israel is an apartheid state, in candid comments during an interview with The Atlantic as he prepares to step down from his role in Washington.

The French ambassador, who is about to end his five-year tenure in Washington DC, spoke to the American magazine about US President Donald Trump’s peace plan and the political status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

French ambassador to the US Gérard Araud: "[Israel] won’t make [Palestinians] citizens…So they will have to make it official, which is we know the situation, which is an apartheid. There will be officially an apartheid state. They are in fact already." https://t.co/GSlDaWhkeW pic.twitter.com/J1RRhhZYsV — The IMEU (@theIMEU) April 22, 2019

Araud said that Israel has no interest in making concessions in the peace process due to the power imbalance between them and the Palestinian Authority.

If Israel annexes parts of the occupied West Bank, as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu promised in his recent re-election campaign, then Palestinians would either become “stateless” or “citizens of Israel”.

Araud told The Atlantic:

“They [Israel] won’t make them citizens of Israel. So they will have to make it official, which is we know the situation, which is an apartheid.”

He added:

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

The outgoing ambassador said he also believed that the long-awaited Trump peace plan is doomed to fail as the “more powerful [party] is imposing terms on the weaker party”.

Araud said:

“That’s the basis of Jared Kushner’s (peace plan) – it will be a proposal very close to what the Israelis want. Is it doomed to fail? I should say 99 percent yes, but 1 percent, you never forget the 1 percent.”

Araud also told The Atlantic:

“He (Trump) is totally transactional. He is more popular than (Binyamin) Netanyahu in Israel, so the Israelis trust him. That’s the first bet, Kushner told me.”

Gérard Araud recalls that 'once Trump told Macron [the French president], ‘I have given everything to the Israelis; the Israelis will have to give me something''https://t.co/MEwEkrxoEK — Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) April 21, 2019

He added:

“The second is that the Palestinians may consider, it’s their last chance to get limited sovereignty. And the third element is Kushner is going to pour money on the Palestinians. Don’t forget, the Arabs are behind the Americans.”

The Palestinians have refused to talk to the Trump administration since the US president recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, with Palestinian officials saying the US peace plan is doomed to fail.

Accusing the US of pro-Israel bias, the Palestinian Authority has said the US should no longer act as the main mediator in stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

South African legal expert John Dugard says both South Africa & Palestine fit international law definition of apartheid. But while European governments welcomed sanctions on South Africa, they’re complicit in Israeli apartheid, criminalizing #BDS. More: https://t.co/56eQOos4aU pic.twitter.com/pXrG3NltsM — BDS movement (@BDSmovement) April 22, 2019

The Trump administration has since dealt a series of blows to the Palestinian Authority, including cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for the Palestinians.

Last month, Trump officially recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. The Golan Heights is a territory that Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

(Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, PC, Social Media)