On Friday February 16, Emmanuel Macron provided French support to supporters of unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, ensuring that it was no longer “a taboo”, despite Israel’s warnings regarding this prospect which is emerging among certain Western allies.
While receiving King Abdullah II of Jordan at the Elysée, the French president also warned of the “unprecedented humanitarian disaster” and the “turning point” that an Israeli offensive against the Palestinian town of Rafah would cause, where nearly a million and a half Palestinians are trapped on the border with Egypt.
Since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, and the conflict it provoked thanks to massive Israeli reprisals in Gaza, Paris has affirmed that only the “two-state solution”, Israeli and Palestinian, can get the region out of the rut. And is delighted that this old idea, muted for years, has been clearly put back on the agenda by the United States.
Mutual recognition of two States
We must give it “decisive and irreversible momentum,” the French president insisted on Friday. But he took, for the first time, a notable diplomatic step by threatening unilateral authorization in the absence of Israeli will to achieve such a solution through negotiations. “The recognition of a Palestinian state is not a taboo for France,” warned Emmanuel Macron.
“We owe it to the Palestinians, whose aspirations have been trampled on for too long. We owe it to the Israelis who experienced the greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century. We owe it to a region that yearns to escape the promoters of chaos and sowers of revenge,” he added.
The diplomatic community has been advocating for years for mutual recognition by Israelis and Palestinians of two states living in peace side by side. After being at the heart of the negotiations carried out under the aegis of the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this perspective has been at a standstill for years.
A “reward for terrorism”
Nearly 140 countries have unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state, but no major Western power or G7 member has done so. French or European, or even American, recognition would above all have diplomatic weight: without peace or negotiations, such a state would be difficult to survive.
But brandishing the threat appears to be an additional means of pressure on Israel. Is this a coordinated strategy? Emmanuel Macron’s statements come as several signs in favor of possible Western recognition have recently emerged.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday rejected any international recognition of a Palestinian state outside of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, affirming that such an initiative “would offer an enormous reward to terrorism”.
Among the European leaders most sensitive to the Palestinian cause, the Spaniard Pedro Sanchez estimated in November that recognizing a Palestinian state was “in the interest of Europe”, without ruling out a unilateral decision. Several European countries have already taken this step, such as Hungary, Poland and Romania. But most did so before entering the European Union.
Possible American recognition
At the end of January, the head of British diplomacy, David Cameron, also spoke of the need to examine, with the United Kingdom’s allies, “the question of recognition of a Palestinian state, including at the United Nations”, which could contribute “to making this process irreversible”. London, however, had to ensure that its position had not changed.
Above all, American media have reported in recent weeks that recognition of a Palestinian state was not ruled out by Washington. The Axios news site wrote that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had asked his services to present options for possible American and international recognition after the war in Gaza.
The head of American diplomacy publicly pleaded last week in Tel Aviv for the definition of a “concrete, irreversible and timetabled path towards a Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside Israel.”
