“We have to go towards recognition and therefore, in the coming months, we will go. »» Here are the words of French President Emmanuel Macron when he returned from a trip to the border of Egypt and Gaza last April. Considered at the very beginning in June, upstream of an international conference co -chaired with Saudi Arabia finally postponed, this announcement will ultimately be materialized at the next United Nations General Assembly in New York next September.
That said, this recognition raises questions, in the middle of the summer holidays, in an international context more tense than ever, in the continuity of the national drama caused on October 7 on the Israelis, and the humanitarian disaster generated in Gaza by the Riposte war started by Benyamin Netanyahu. After the worst massacre of Jews known since the Second World War, a Palestinian state in forceps is probably not the best solution. If in theory its creation is probably the only solution to securing the whole region, it is, let us recognize it, almost impossible to set to music today: the two camps have never been so radicalized.
“Does Emmanuel Macron offer a political communication intended to serve his future projects? »»
This would obviously be reasonable to Hamas and its dreadful attack of 2023 which provoked the death of nearly 1,200 Israelis, but it would also be to oppose the most fanatic religious currents which still support Netanyahu and which pushed the Knesset in recent days to recognize the annexation of the West Bank in the logic of Great Israel. If France’s declaration has sparked many reactions in the Hebrew state and the United States, and maintains the question at the top of the international agenda priorities, it will probably have no impact on the situation. Because we arrived at a stadium where no one wants to live next to the other.
What real impact?
Does Emmanuel Macron offer a political communication intended to serve his future projects? Will the voice of France advance the “schmilblick”? Not really. We live on our old glory. Admittedly, it is the first time that a European, nuclear power, member of the UN and G7 Security Council, has taken the plunge. Macron hopes to push countries like Germany and Great Britain to do the same.
To date, in the United Nations General Assembly, 150 states have already recognized Palestine
For decades, France’s position on the recognition of the Palestinian state has been based on a diplomatic balance between support for the Palestinian law to a state and attachment to a negotiated solution with Israel. Paris has long supported a solution to two states, with Jerusalem for shared capital, based on the borders of 1967. But all of this is only wind, given the situation completely contrary on the ground. A few months ago, however, France considered that unilateral recognition, outside the negotiation process, could be counterproductive. Besides, Israel often uses the shyness of certain countries to cross the Rubicond.
Nevertheless, faced with the dead end of the peace process and the degradation of the situation in Gaza and in the West Bank, voices amounted to France, especially coming from rebellious France, for a change of posture. It is, hopefully, probably not what prompted the French president to accelerate his decision, but probably more personal interests. In May 2024, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Stéphane Séjourné, had reaffirmed that France would recognize the Palestinian state “At the time useful”when this has a real impact. It seems that the useful moment is now.
More broadly, to date, at the United Nations General Assembly, 150 states have already recognized Palestine: we are talking about almost all countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and the BRICS in general. This speaks volumes about the isolation of the Hebrew state in the international system, but it has never really shaken the determination of Benyamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, who consider that offering a state to the Palestinians in the current context would be only a reward for terrorism.
Condemnation of Israel and the United States
While the Israeli government coalition has been on the brink for several days, the question of the Prime Minister’s role in the situation arises. If October 7 is the primary responsibility of Hamas, which has Islamized the Palestinian and instrumentalized question, civilians in Gaza since its takeover in 2007, Netanyahu also carries responsibility in the deterioration of the situation in the enclave and in the West Bank, between blockade established with Egypt and continuation of colonization.
However, France’s surprise decision to recognize a state that is unlikely to see the light of day shows how Paris does not print its brand in the bilateral and transactional relations that Donald Trump has since returned to the White House. France is trying to weigh in what remains of the international system, while the marginalization of the United Nations considered as too third-world and leftist by Tel Aviv and Washington accelerates.
Washington only understands the balance of power and the personal relationship: Macron’s declaration is somewhere an admission of failure in a world that is transformed at high speed. And even within this old international system, the United States of Donald Trump keep this centerpiece in a dated organization that they reject: the vet to the Security Council.
Israeli opinion is divided between nationalists increasingly hostile to the Palestinians and an increasing part of the population which requires the end of the war, condemns the situation in Gaza and believes that a Palestinian state will allow their security. Many of them in the Hebrew state denounce the policy of the Prime Minister and to dream of a political alternative. But when we know the situation and the history of the Israeli withdrawal of Gaza in 2005, which was a national drama, which can imagine that an Israeli government will manage to ask without blood bathing the departure of more than 450,000 Israeli settlers from the West Bank? This is an impossible mission.
If only, you could be reassured on the side of the Palestinian political landscape. This is not the case: Hamas, despite its clear weakening at the moment, can already count on new recruits, desperate and instrumental Palestinians. The Islamist organization hastened to greet France’s decision, proof that it still plans to play a political role on the spot.
On the side of the Palestinian authority, it is not more glorious. Between the diaspora of exiled Fatah executives, who defend an endless cause at a distance and have been coined, a Palestinian power gangrenous by corruption and paralysis for too many years, the refusal of Mahmoud Abbas to convene elections, his compromise with Israel in terms of security cooperation in the West Bank who turned against the Total.
French Unity Division
Beyond the symbolic act, Emmanuel Macron to weigh internationally as he likes to do, knows that he plays an all. It is a highly flammable decision which risks turning more on France than serving the interests of the Palestinians. The importation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Europe, and in particular in France, is no longer a time bomb but a grenade already disgusted.
The rise in anti -Semitism, Propalestinian radicalism as the without complex propagation of the Israeli Hasbara (propaganda) push a little more every day to the polarization of French society. Pro-barbus activists in rebellious France greet, like Hamas, the decision of the French president. The Jews feel more and more in danger in France, even those who obviously do not endorse the policy of Netanyahu or even who denounce it.
Overbidding around the dramatic situation experienced by the two peoples in the region is likely to endanger the national communities even more, and obviously the Jews first. A president should preserve above all the unity of the country and focus on the internal problems which are legion, but it no longer has the power: if France still seeks to be the model of human rights country abroad, it should not be destabilized by questions like that of the Middle East.
“A president should preserve above all the unity of the country and focus on his internal problems”
Today, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who only instructs his electorate and drink from this fight not “In favor of” but rather ” against “, Must drink from a break. The internal consequences in France quickly risk becoming uncontrollable. It is enough to see the last events yesterday in Nice on the Promenade des Anglais, where some illuminated uttered on the fringes of a Propalestinian parade a flood of anti -Semitic, racist and homophobic insults. Palestinians probably deserve much better ambassadors for so many decades to defend their fight. But in 2027, Emmanuel Macron will be elsewhere: his dream, after his two terms, is to try to weigh on the international scene. It will be all that he will have left and he is still young. The internal consequences of these past acts will no longer count much for him.
*Sébastien Boussois is a doctor of political science, Arab and geopolitical world researcher, teacher in international relations at the IHECS (Brussels), partner of the CNAM Paris (Defense Security Team), at the Institute of Applied Geopolitics Studies (IEGA Paris), to the Nordic Center for Conflict Transformation (NCCT Stockholm) and at the Geostrategic Observatory in Geneva (Switzerland).
