On April 9, interviewed by France 5 public TV, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France, under certain conditions, could recognize a Palestinian State in June. “We must move toward recognition [of a Palestinian state] ... in the coming months,” he said. The recording was made after his two-day visit to Egypt, where he met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, and where he backed the Egyptian reconstruction plan for Gaza. At El-Arish, near the Gaza border, Macron visited wounded Palestinian civilians and called for an immediate end to the blockade on Gaza. In Egypt, Macron also called for “a regional security organization that preserves the security of all and stability,” starting with that of Israel. This is why France has rejected the plan outlined by U.S. President Donald Trump to expel the Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip, or even to annex the Gaza Strip, in violation of international law, and make it a “Riviera of the Middle East.” According to Macron, the Palestinian enclave is “not a real estate project.”
Immediately following Macron’s announcement, Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair, in a post on X, lashed out against Macron. “Screw you!” he wrote, before listing regions such as Corsica, New Caledonia, and French Guiana, as examples of French colonialism. He later shared a post comparing Macron to Philippe Pétain, the Vichy leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany. A statement released the next day by Netanyahu’s office said that Netanyahu and Macron spoke by phone and that Netanyahu expressed to Macron his “strong opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state, stating that it [recognition of a State of Palestine] would be a huge reward for terrorism.” “The Prime Minister told the French President that a Palestinian state established just minutes away from Israeli cities would become a stronghold of Iranian terrorism, and that a vast majority of the Israeli public firmly opposes this—and this has been his consistent and long-standing policy.”
In December 2024, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution reiterating support for a two-state solution and establishing the framework for the conference on Palestine set to take place in New York on June 2-4. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the prospect of a two-state solution was almost “beyond the point of no return,” as Israel continues to increase settlement expansion in the West Bank, and wage war and impose a humanitarian blockade on Gaza where more than 52,000 Palestinians have already been killed.
The recognition of Palestine by France, which would become the third permanent UN Security Council member, after Russia and China, and the first G7 member state to do so, will be at the center of that New York UN conference, which Macron will chair alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, former advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during the Oslo Accords, Ofer Bronchtein, a Franco-Israeli peace activist, advising Macron since 2020 on Israel-Palestine rapprochement, said: “We [France] want to be part of a group.… Macron has emphasized that he wants this to be a broad initiative, including Arab and Muslim countries that will recognize the State of Israel, as well as other European nations.” He added that the decision to move the conference from Paris to New York was no coincidence. “We hope that the U.S. will also take part. I personally would like to see Israelis and Palestinians in the talks,” said Bronchtein.
