Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said that if the French government recognizes Palestine as a state in June, as Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on Wednesday, it would be favoring terrorism.
A ‘unilateral recognition’ of a fictional Palestinian state, by any country, which in reality we all know, would be a prize for terrorism and a boost for [Palestinian Islamic movement] Hamas,” Saar wrote.
“This type of action will not bring peace, security or stability to our region; on the contrary: it will only push them away,” the minister said on Wednesday night on the social network X.
France could recognize a Palestinian state in June during a conference it will co-chair with Saudi Arabia at the United Nations in New York, Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday.
According to the French head of state, this initiative could also lead to the recognition of Israel by several countries.
“We must move towards recognition [of the Palestinian state] and that is how we will move forward in the coming months,” the French president said in an interview with France 5 after returning from Egypt.
“Our goal is to chair this conference with Saudi Arabia sometime in June, where we can finalize the process of mutual recognition by various countries,” he added.
The conference aims to create a Palestinian state. Calls for a “two-state solution”, with the Palestinians on an equal footing with Israel, have intensified as the current war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has dragged on.
Nearly 150 countries recognize the Palestinian state. In May 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain advanced, followed by Slovenia in June.
The two-state solution, however, continues to be rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I will do it (…) because I believe that at some point it will be the right thing to do and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must allow all those who defend Palestine to recognize Israel in turn, which many of them do not do,” noted the French head of state.
For Macron, this step will also allow “to be clear in the fight against those who deny Israel’s right to exist, as is the case with Iran.”
In 2020, the US-brokered Abraham Accords led to the recognition of Israel by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
Saudi Arabia, which had also begun negotiations for rapprochement with Israel, has however suspended them since the start of the war in Gaza, making any recognition conditional on the creation of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority immediately welcomed Emmanuel Macron’s announcement.
Recognition by France “would be a step in the right direction, consistent with the defense of the rights of the Palestinian people and the two-state solution,” Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin told Agence France-Presse.
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