Macron says France will recognize Palestine as a state : NPR
French president Emmanuel Macron speaks to the army leaders of the Le Brienne hotel on July 13.
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PARIS – French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that France will recognize Palestine as a state, in a daring diplomatic decision in the middle of the world’s anger of the snowball in the face of people who affect Gaza. Israel denounced the decision.
Macron said in an article on X that he would formalize the decision at the United Nations General Assembly in September. “The urgent thing today is that the war in Gaza stops and that the civilian population is saved,” he wrote.
The mainly symbolic movement exerts additional diplomatic pressure on Israel as war and the humanitarian crisis in the rage of the Gaza Strip. France is now the greatest Western power to recognize Palestine, and this decision could open the way to other countries to do the same. More than 140 countries recognize a Palestinian state, including more than a dozen in Europe.
The Palestinians seek an independent state in occupied West Bank, annexed Jerusalem-Est and Gaza, territories that Israel occupied in the war in the Middle East of 1967. The Israeli government and most of its political class have long been opposed to the Palestinian State and now say that it would reward the activists after the attack on Hamas on October 7, 2023.
“We firmly condemn President Macron’s decision,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “Such a movement rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza has become. A Palestinian state under these conditions would be a launch ramp to destroy Israel – not to live in peace next to it. ”
The Palestinian authority welcomed him. A letter announcing this decision was presented Thursday to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem.
“ We express our thanks and our assessment ” in Macron, Hussein Al Sheikh, vice-president of the OLP under Abbas, published. “This position reflects France’s commitment to international law and its support for the rights of the Palestinian people to self -determination.”
The United States strongly “rejects” Macron’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state, wrote Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an article on the social platform X.
“This reckless decision only serves Hamas’ propaganda and puts peace. It is a slap in front of the victims of October 7,” said Rubio.
With the largest Jewish population in Europe and the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, France has often seen battles in the Middle East fend for demonstrations or other tensions at home.
The French president offered Israel after the attacks on October 7 in Hamas and frequently denounces anti -Semitism, but he has become more and more frustrated by the War of Israel in Gaza.
“Given its historical commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I decided that France will recognize the state of Palestine,” posted Macron. “Peace is possible.”
Thursday’s announcement came shortly after the United States cut off the cease-fire talks from Gaza to the United States in Qatar, saying that Hamas did not show good faith.
He also came a few days before France and Saudi Arabia co-hosted a conference at the UN next week about a two-state solution. Last month, Macron expressed his “determination to recognize the state of Palestine” and he put pressure for a broader movement towards a two -state solution in parallel with the recognition of Israel and his right to defend himself.
Momentum has been built against Israel in recent days. Earlier this week, France and more than two dozen countries, mainly European countries, condemned the restrictions of Israel to aid shipping on the territory and the murders of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach food.
Macron will join the leaders of Great Britain and Germany for emergency talks Friday on Gaza, how to bring food to the hungry and how to stop fighting.
“We are clear that the state is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people. A ceasefire will put us on the path of the recognition of a Palestinian State and a solution to two states which guarantees peace and security for the Palestinians and the Israelis ”,` `British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said by announcing the call.” Suffering and famine in Gaza are not intended.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem little time after the 1967 War and considers it as part of its capital. In the West Bank, he built dozens of colonies, some resembling tentacular suburbs, which now house more than 500,000 Jewish settlers with Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the territory live under the Israeli military regime, the Palestinian authority exercising limited autonomy in population centers.
The latest serious peace talks paraded in 2009 when Netanyahu came to power. Most of the international community considers that the creation of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel is the only realistic solution to the centenary conflict.
