President Emmanuel Macron stated Wednesday that France intends to acknowledge a Palestinian state inside months and should accomplish that throughout a June U.N. convention in New York centered on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian battle.
The transfer triggered a scathing condemnation from the Israeli overseas minister on Thursday.
“We must move toward recognition and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, instructed France 5 tv.
“Our aim is to chair this conference with Saudi Arabia in June, where we could finalize this movement of mutual recognition by several parties,” he added.
“I will do it because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognize Israel in turn, which many of them do not do,” he added.
Such recognition would enable France “to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel’s right to exist – which is the case with Iran – and to commit ourselves to collective security in the region,” he added.
France has lengthy championed a two-state answer to the Israel-Palestinian battle, together with after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas incursion of southern Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a serious coverage swap and danger antagonizing Israel, which insists such strikes by overseas states are untimely.
‘No one will make investments a cent’
France’s recognition of Palestinian statehood “would be a step in the right direction in line with safeguarding the rights of the Palestinian people and the two state solution,” Palestinian minister of state for overseas affairs, Varsen Aghabekian Shahin, instructed AFP.
Nearly 150 international locations acknowledge a Palestinian state. In May 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain introduced recognition, adopted by Slovenia in June, in strikes partly fuelled by condemnation of Israel’s genocidal battle on Gaza.
But France could be essentially the most vital European energy to acknowledge a Palestinian state, a transfer the United States has additionally lengthy resisted.
In Egypt, Macron held summit talks with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II and likewise made clear he was strongly against any displacement or annexation in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
U.S. President Donald Trump has advised turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” with the Palestinians transferring elsewhere – a suggestion that has sparked bitter condemnation.
Macron responded that the Gaza Strip was “not a real estate project.”
“Simplistic thinking sometimes doesn’t help,” he added, and, in a message to Trump stated: “Perhaps it would be wonderful if one day it developed in an extraordinary way, but our responsibility is to save lives, restore peace, and negotiate a political framework.”
“If all this doesn’t exist, no one will invest. Today, no one will invest a cent in Gaza,” he stated.
Israel seethes
Meanwhile Thursday, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced Macron’s announcement, claiming it will be a “prize” for terrorism.
“A unilateral recognition of a fictional Palestinian state, by any country, in the reality that we all know, will be a prize for … and a boost for Hamas,” Saar stated on X late Wednesday.
“These kind of actions will not bring peace, security and stability in our region closer – but the opposite: they only push them further away.”
Source: www.dailysabah.com