The French Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, yesterday criticised the policies of the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, as "catastrophic" for the Middle East.
"The peace process is broken," Mr Vedrine told a conference of members of the ruling Socialist Party in Montpellier, southern France. He said a growing number of European countries agreed with France that Israel was largely to blame.
Mr Vedrine said Mr Netanyahu's policies were undermining Mr Yasser Arafat and destroying the Palestinian Authority as Israel's "essential and irreplaceable partner in the peace process".
"This is a catastrophic policy, it seems to me, both in the short term and in the future, for the Palestinians, for Israel and for the entire region," he said. It was the strongest French criticism of Israel since the peace process began to falter.
Mr Vedrine took office in June in the Socialist-led government and his remarks were likely to cement Israel's impression that Paris is too pro-Arab to play a larger role in reviving the peace process.