Dozens of members of the French Parliament signed a petition asking the French president François Hollande to recognize the Palestinian state before the end of his term, according to the French magazine Journal de France on Sunday.

The French magazine quoted the petition as saying that France must break the deadlock of the conflict through an official reaffirmation, in the name of the non-negotiable right of self-determination, that Palestinians have the right to establish a state, which is necessary to show respect to the international law and maintain Israel’s security.

According to the magazine, the petition was initiated by the socialist MP Gilbert Roger, the president of the France-Palestine Group, who said, “France cannot advocate the two-state solution without recognizing the state of Palestine.”

The French capital, Paris, hosted in January 2017 the Paris International Peace Conference with the participation of foreign ministers and representatives from 70 countries to confer about the mechanisms of implementing the international resolutions and the possibility of holding bilateral negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considered the Paris Conference an obstacle to the peace process and described it as “a French-sponsored Palestinian fraud aimed at adopting other anti-Israel stands.”