France will recognize Palestine as a state, said President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron said Thursday in an article on X that he would formalize the decision at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
“In accordance with his historical commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I decided that France will recognize the state of Palestine,” wrote Macron.
“I will solemnly announce this to the United Nations General Assembly in September this year,” he added.
This decision makes France the largest and undoubtedly the most influential country in Europe to recognize a Palestinian state, after the members of the European Union, Norway, Ireland and Spain, said that they would also start the same process.
At least 142 countries out of the 193 UN members recognize or currently plan to recognize a Palestinian state, but several powerful Western countries have refused to do so. They include the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.
The announcement comes as European anger concerning the War of Israel against Gaza, in which Israel killed 59,587 Palestinians and imposed serious restrictions on aid deliveries which led to a hunger crisis, increased.
Earlier this week, France joined the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and 21 other Israel allies to condemn restrictions on aid expeditions to Gaza, as well as the murders of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach food.
The joint declaration, the most important to date in Western countries, said that the war “should end now”.
Macron had previously indicated his “determination to recognize the state of Palestine”, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France should co-organize a conference at the UN next week on a solution to two states in the conflict of several decades.
The British government also said that Prime Minister Keir Starmer intended to coordinate with the France allies and Germany in an urgent telephone call on the situation in the Gaza Strip on Friday.
Starmer said that a cease-fire in Gaza “we were on the road to the recognition of a Palestinian state and a solution to two states, which guarantees peace and security for the Palestinians and the Israelis”.
“Commitment to international law”
In his post on Thursday, Macron shared a letter to the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas in which he underlined his intention.
In response, the deputy for Abbas, Hussein Al-Sheikh, congratulated the French chief.
“This position reflects France’s commitment to international law and its support for the rights of the Palestinian people to self -determination and the creation of our independent state,” said Sheikh.
Hamas also praised Macron’s announcement as a “positive step” and urged all countries to do the same.
“We consider this as a positive step in the right direction towards justice to our oppressed Palestinian people and supporting their legitimate right to self -determination,” said Hamas in a statement.
“We call all countries of the world – in particular European nations and those who have not yet recognized the state of Palestine – to follow the example of France,” added Hamas.
The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat unilaterally declared an independent Palestinian state during the first intifada in 1988, Algeria quickly becoming the first country to officially recognize the State.
Dozens of countries, mainly in the Middle East and Africa, followed in a week, in a list that increased regularly since Israel launched its war in Gaza after the attack on Hamas against South Israel on October 7, 2023.
But the main obstacles remain to the creation of a future Palestinian state.
Israel currently occupies Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, long considered the capital of the future Palestinian state.
The Israeli government has supervised a major expansion of the Israeli colonies, illegal under international law, through occupied West Bank, in the rights that observers have described as an effective annexation.
Earlier this week, the Parliament of Israel approved a symbolic measure explicitly calling for the annexation of the territory, which it initially grasped in the 1967 war against Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sentenced Macron’s announcement.
“Such a decision rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza has become,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
“A Palestinian state under these conditions would be a launch to destroy Israel,” the statement said.
The Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz described the decision to be “shame and hand over terrorism”.
“We will not allow the creation of a Palestinian entity that would harm our security, endanger our existence in danger and undermine our historical law in the country of Israel,” he said.
