PARIS (EJP) ---Both presidential candidates in France who will face off in a second round of  voting on Sunday said they will travel to Israel if they win.

"Yes, this trip will be part of my plans," Socialist Francois Hollande, whom all polls predict a win, told French Jewish news website Tribunejuive.info which interviewed the two candidates.

Hollande said that peace between Israel and the Palestinians should include "two neighboring and sovereign states each within its own legitimacy."

"Even beyond the Israeli-Palestinian issue, we must be very firm with respect to Iran, whose nuclear program is a vital danger for Israel and for world peace," he also said.

He said he is "totally opposed” to the boycott of Israeli products which, he added, "is illegal and does not serve the cause of peace."

Extreme-left  parties and the Greens, which are potential partners of the Socialists if Hollande wins, support such a boycott.

Hollande also stated that the tragedy of Toulouse, in which a teacher and three children were killed in a Jewish school by a French Muslim terrorist, "was a traumatic experience for whole France". "It is particularly unbearable that, on our soil, Jews have been attacked because they are Jews".

"I will be uncompromising in the fight against anti-Semitism. I will not let anything pass that could contribute to a climate that would isolate the Jews within their own country ".

For his part, incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy, of the conservative UMP party, declared: "As I have already had the occasion to say, the day after my re-election, if that is the choice of the French people, I will go to Israel and I will take an initiative for Middle East peace.”

Earlier this week, during a visit in New York for meetings with American Jewish organizations, Richard Prasquier, President of CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewry, responded to the controversy surrounding an article he published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in which he appeared to support Nicolas Sarkozy rather than Hollande. In this article he argued that the feelings of the Socialist candidate vis-à-vis Israel "were not really highlighted, and its position vis-à-vis the Iranian threat remains to be tested."

"I only said that Jews should not vote for extreme-right candidate Marine  Le Pen and that Francois Hollande as Nicolas Sarkozy are both friends of Israel," he told at a news conference.

He reiterated his concern regarding the weight the "anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic" extreme-left could have on a government led by Hollande.

During his visit to the United States, Richard Prasquier met with leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and of the American Jewish Committee.

During the visit,  Malcolm Hoenlein, Vice-President of the Conference of Presidents, called for a mobilization against the rise of anti-Semitism in France and Europe: "We must learn the lessons of history and stop kowtowing. We must fight,"he said.