President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview in an interview on Wednesday that France plans to recognize a Palestinian kingdom within months to settle the Israeli-Filistini conflict and may take the move at the United Nations Conference in New York.
“We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who visited Egypt this week, told France 5 television.
“Our aim is to preside over this conference with Saudi Arabia in June, where we can finalize this movement of mutual recognition by many parties.”
He said, “I will do this because I believe it will be right at some point and because I want to participate in a collective dynamic, who should also allow all those who defend Palestine who do to identify Israel in turn, which many of them do not do so,” he said.
Such recognition will “allow France to be clear in our fight against those who deny the right to exist of Israel – which is a case with Iran – and to commit themselves for collective security in the region,” he said.
France has long given a two-state solution for the Israeli-Filistinian conflict, including the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 by Hamas of Palestinian militants.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state will mark a major policy switch and puts Israel at risk, emphasizing such steps that such steps by foreign states are prematurely.
– ‘Nobody will invest one percent’ –
France’s belief of Palestinian state would “be a step in the right direction to the Palestinian people’s rights and the security of the rights of two state solutions,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghbecian Shahin told the AFP.
About 150 countries recognize a Palestinian state. In May 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced recognition after Slovenia in June, after the 7 October attacks, IFRAI’s partially entered fuel by condemning Gaza’s bombing.
But France would be the most important European power to recognize a Palestinian state, the United States has also long opposed.
In Egypt, Macron interacted with President Abdel Phatta al-Sisi and Raja Abdullah II of Jordan, and also clarified that he was strongly opposing any displacement or attachment in the West Bank occupied by Gaza and Israel.
US President Donald Trump suggested converting Gaza to “Riviera of the Middle East”, which has to move somewhere else with Palestinians – a suggestion that has strictly condemned.
Macron replied that the Gaza strip was “not a real estate project.”
“Simplified thinking never helps,” he said, and, in a message to Trump said: “It would probably be amazing if it developed in an extraordinary way, but our responsibility is to save life, restore peace and talk to a political structure.”
“If all this does not exist, no one will invest. Today, no one will invest one percent in Gaza,” he said.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is published by a syndicated feed.)
