“We must evolve towards recognition and we will do so in the coming months,” explains the French president.
President Emmanuel Macron says that France could recognize a Palestinian state “in the coming months”.
Macron said on Wednesday on France 5 television, which he aimed to finalize the decision of a United Nations conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which his country will co-reside with Saudi Arabia in June.
“We must evolve towards recognition, and we will do it in the coming months,” said Macron.
“I don’t do it to please anyone. I will do it because at some point, it will be right,” he said.
The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Palestine, Warsen Aghabekian Shahin, told the AFP news agency that France’s recognition would be “a step in the right direction in accordance with the safeguard of the rights of the Palestinian people and the two -state solution”.
The Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Gideon Saar said that any “unilateral recognition” of a Palestinian state is a “boost for Hamas”.
“A” unilateral recognition “of a fictitious Palestinian state, by any country, in the reality that we all know, will be a price of terror and a boost for Hamas,” he wrote on X.
“This type of actions will not bring peace, security and stability closer to our region-but the opposite: they do not push them further,” he said.
Palestine was recognized as a sovereign state by 147 in 193 UN members so far, with Armenia, Slovenia, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados to join their ranks last year.
However, despite growing international support for the Palestinian state, several major Western countries such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany have kept recognition.
Macron said that he was planning a “collective dynamic”, allowing certain Middle East countries to recognize the Israeli state in turn.
Countries that do not recognize Israel include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Macron said that the recognition of Palestine as a state would allow France “to be clear in our fight against those who deny the right of Israel to exist, which is the case with Iran and commit to the collective security of the region”.
France has long defended a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, pursuing its policy after the attack on October 7, 2023, from the Palestinian Armed group Hamas on Israel.
But the formal recognition of Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a change in major policy and could antagonize Israel, which insists that these movements by foreign states are premature.
During a recent trip to Egypt, Macron had interviews with President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi and King Jordan Abdullah II, clearly indicating that he was strongly opposed to any trip or annexation to Gaza and in the West Bank occupied by Israeli.
