Netanyahu meets with Hollande on a previous state visit to Paris.
French President Francois Hollande is making a three day visit to the epicenter next week. He will arrive on Sunday and depart Tuesday. During that time, he will meet with top Israeli leaders in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He will also meet top Palestinian leaders in Ramallah.
The Arab-Israeli peace talks will be a key part of his agenda. The top priority will be discussing the on-going nuclear negotiations with Iran which restart on November 20th. Last week France played a crucial role in stopping what it called a “sucker’s deal,” and urging the P5+1 group (U.S., UK, Russia, China and France, plus Germany) to slow down and be more careful with the negotiations.
Here is Hollande’s schedule, according to local media reports.
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Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres will greet the French dignitaries at Ben Gurion Airport at around 1 pm on Sunday. As in the visit of US President Barack Obama in March, the three leaders will hold a ceremony on the tarmac before heading for the capital.
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In Jerusalem, Hollande will plant a tree in the garden of the President’s Residence and hold a first meeting with Peres.
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The French president’s next stop will be Mt. Herzl, where he will lay a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl and place a stone on the grave of slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and his late wife Leah.
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Accompanied by Peres and Netanyahu, Hollande will visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and lay a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance.
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At around 6 pm, Hollande will arrive at the Prime Minister’s Office for a tête-à-tête with Netanyahu, which is scheduled to last for about an hour and a half. On the agenda: Iran, Iran and yet more Iran.
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Netanyahu, who has been adamant in his opposition to the interim deal the international community is considering signing with Tehran, will try his utmost to convince Hollande to stand his ground during upcoming rounds of negotiations.
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After their meeting, the two leaders will hold a joint press conference and then proceed to dine together.
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Not far from the Prime Minister’s Residence, the French ministers, including Fabius and Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, will have dinner with their Israeli counterparts at the King David Hotel.
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On Monday morning, Hollande will meet with French clergymen in the Church of St. Anne, in Jerusalem’s Old City, which the Ottomans donated to France in 1856.
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From there, Hollande and Fabius will continue to Ramallah for meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
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The French president is also expected to lay a wreath at the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004 in a French hospital and whose remains were recently examined for traces of poisoning.
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In the late afternoon, Hollande will address the Knesset plenum, which will convene for a special session in his honor. Netanyahu, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and opposition leader Shelly Yachimovich are also scheduled to speak.
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Later on Tuesday, Hollande will hold another meeting with Peres before attending a state dinner at the President’s Residence, in the company of the prime minister, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman and Finance Minister Yair Lapid.
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On Tuesday morning, Hollande will lay stones on the graves of the victims of the March 2012 attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse — Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, his two children Gavriel and Arieh, ages 5 and 4, and Miriam Monsonego, age 7.
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From Jerusalem’s Har Hamenuchot cemetery, where the Sandlers are buried, the guests from Paris will drive to Tel Aviv for business-related events. Peres, Holland and Netanyahu will give speeches related to bilateral trade, economic cooperation and innovation.
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Hollande will then meet with members of the French community in Israel at Tel Aviv University at an event which will mark the conclusion of his visit.