The shift in favor of recognition may be of little solace to those on the brink of famine in Gaza, but it’s clear that Macron was at the forefront of Western Europe’s push in favor of this historical demand of the Palestinian people.
“This is definitively a French moment,” said Hamza Hraoui, the director of the Paris-based global public affairs firm MGH Partners. “It’s a point scored for French diplomacy.”
The French president had for months been telegraphing that French recognition of a Palestinian state, the first of any G7 country, was coming. Macron said in April that he would move toward recognizing Palestinian statehood but attached a string of ambitious conditions, including the necessity that several Middle Eastern nations needed to normalize their relations with Israel.
Macron had hoped the venue for such joint recognition would be a United Nations conference organized by France and Saudi Arabia, but that idea collapsed with the end of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. The conference itself, initially slated for June, was postponed after Israel’s airstrikes on Iran.
Yet Macron remained moved to act after his meeting with Gazans at a hospital in Egypt in April, according to France’s former ambassador for the Mediterranean, Karim Amellal.
“He was constantly talking about it … discussing it with everybody, even talking about it on a trip to Southeast Asia,” said Amellal.