‘We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,’ French president says.
President Emmanuel Macron says France could recognise a Palestinian state “in the coming months”.
Macron told France 5 television on Wednesday that he aimed to finalise the move at a United Nations conference on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which his country will co-chair with Saudi Arabia in June.
“We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron said.
“I’m not doing it to please anyone. I’ll do it because at some point it will be right,” he said.
Palestine’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Varsen Aghabekian Shahin, told the news agency AFP that France’s recognition would be “a step in the right direction in line with safeguarding the rights of the Palestinian people and the two-state solution”.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said any “unilateral recognition” of a Palestinian state would be a “boost for Hamas”.
“A ‘unilateral recognition’ of a fictional Palestinian state, by any country, in the reality that we all know, will be a prize for terror and a boost for Hamas,” he wrote on X.
“These kind of actions will not bring peace, security and stability in our region closer – but the opposite: they only push them further away,” he said.
Palestine has been recognised as a sovereign state by 146 out of 193 UN members so far, with Armenia, Slovenia, Ireland, Norway, Spain, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados joining their ranks last year.
However, despite growing international support for Palestinian statehood, several major Western countries like the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany have withheld recognition.
Macron said that he foresaw a “collective dynamic”, enabling some countries in the Middle East to recognise the Israeli state in turn.
Countries that do not recognise Israel include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Macron said that recognising Palestine as a state would allow 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”.
France has long championed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, continuing its policy after the October 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian armed group Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and could antagonise Israel, which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.
On a recent trip to Egypt, Macron held talks with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, making it clear he was strongly opposed to any displacement or annexation in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.