Israel has reiterated that only direct negotiations with the Palestinians can lead to peace, in a response to France’s invitation to take part in a Middle East peace conference in Paris later this year.

At a meeting in Jerusalem with Israel's acting national security adviser and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's diplomatic adviser, French Mideast envoy Pierre Vimont was told ‘’in a clear and unequivocal manner ‘’that Israel's position to promote the peace process and reach an agreement will only come through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority," Netanyahu's office said in a statement.

France organised a preliminary conference in June where the United Nations, European Union, United States and major Arab countries gathered to discuss proposals without the Israelis or Palestinians present.

The plan was to hold a follow-up conference before year-end with the Israelis and Palestinians involved and see whether the two sides could be brought back to negotiations. The last US-backed talks ended in failure in April 2014.

Pierre Vimont, who is France's special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and a former senior official of the EU's foreign affairs service, told a conference in Tel Aviv on Sunday that the current status quo was distancing the two-state solution and necessitating an intervention: "We want to revive the two-state solution in this window of opportunity and return it to the international agenda."