Israel under pressure as Palestine gains recognition

French President Macron to recognise Palestine as momentum builds against Israel

ANALYSIS | THE INDEPENDENT & AGENCIES | French President Emmanuel Macron announced July 24 that France will recognise Palestine as a state, in a bold diplomatic move amid snowballing global anger over people starving in Gaza. Israel denounced the decision.

Macron said in a post on X that he will formalise the decision at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

″Given its historic commitment to a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the state of Palestine,” Macron posted. ″Peace is possible.”

A letter announcing the move was presented the same day to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority welcomed Macron’s announcement.

‘’We express our thanks and appreciation” to Macron, Hussein Al Sheikh, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s vice president under Abbas, posted.

‘’This position reflects France’s commitment to international law and its support for the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination.”

Israel’s government and most of its political class have long been opposed to Palestinian statehood and now say that it would reward militants after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

‘’We strongly condemn President Macron’s decision,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. ‘’Such a move rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became. A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it.”

More than 140 countries recognise a Palestinian state, including more than a dozen in Europe. But France is now the biggest Western power to recognise Palestine, and the move could pave the way for other countries to do the same.

Macron’s proposed recognition of Palestine is mostly symbolic but it puts added diplomatic pressure on Israel as the war and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip rage.

Momentum has been building against Israel in recent days.

Earlier this week, France and more than two dozen mostly European countries condemned Israel’s restrictions on aid shipments into the territory and the killings of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach food.

“The urgent thing today is that the war in Gaza stops and the civilian population is saved,” Macron wrote.

The recognised independent state of Palestine would comprise the current occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem and Gaza. All are territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war. The recognised independent state of Palestine is 6,020 sq km in size or about a quarter of the size of the state of Israel (22,145 sq km) which about 11 times smaller than Uganda.

The state of Palestine would be at number 32 on the list of smallest countries in the world. Still, the recognised independent state of Palestine is bigger than countries such as Seychelles, Mauritius, Singapore, and many more.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem shortly after the 1967 war and considers it part of its capital. In the West Bank, it has built scores of settlements, some resembling sprawling suburbs that are now home to over 500,000 Jewish settlers with Israeli citizenship. The territory’s 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority exercising limited autonomy in population centers.

Added EU recognition

France joins Spain, follows Spain, Ireland and Norway that announced recognition of a Palestinian state in June. Slovenia and the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda soon followed amid international outrage over the civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip following Israel’s offensive.

In June, Macron expressed his “determination to recognise the state of Palestine,” and he has pushed for a broader movement toward a two-state solution in parallel with recognition of Israel and its right to defend itself.

Currently, seven members of the 27-nation European Union officially recognise a Palestine state. Five of them are former east bloc countries who announced recognition in 1988, as did Cyprus, before joining the bloc. Sweden announced recognition in 2014.

Why does recognition matter?

The 1948 U.N. decision that created Israel envisaged a neighboring Palestinian state, but some 70 years later control of the Palestinian territories remains divided and bids for U.N. membership have been denied.

The United States, Britain and other Western countries have backed the idea of an independent Palestinian state existing alongside Israel as a solution to the Middle East’s most intractable conflict, but they insist Palestinian statehood should come as part of a negotiated settlement. There have been no substantive negotiations since 2009. The last serious peace talks broke down in 2009, when Netanyahu returned to power.

Though the EU countries and Norway will not be recognising the State of Palestine, just the possibility of one, the symbolism helps enhance the Palestinians’ international standing and heaps more pressure on Israel to open negotiations on ending the war.

Also, the move lends additional prominence to the Middle East issue ahead of June 6-9 elections to the European Parliament, when some 370 million people are eligible to vote and a steep rise of the extreme right is on the cards.

With Europe’s largest Jewish population and the largest Muslim population in western Europe, France has often seen fighting in the Middle East spill over into protests or other tensions at home.

The French president offered support for Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and frequently speaks out against antisemitism, but he has grown increasingly frustrated about Israel’s war in Gaza.

Macron’s announcement came soon after the U.S. cut short Gaza ceasefire talks in Qatar, saying Hamas wasn’t showing good faith.

It also came days before France and Saudi Arabia co-host a conference at the U.N. next week about a two-state solution. Most of the international community considers the establishment of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel to be the only realistic solution to the century-old conflict.

Why now?

Diplomatic pressure on Israel has grown as the battle with Hamas stretches into its 10th month. The U.N. General Assembly voted by a significant margin on May 11 to grant new “rights and privileges” to Palestine in a sign of growing international support for a vote on full voting membership. The Palestine Authority currently has observer status.

The leaders of Ireland, Malta and Slovenia said in March they were considering recognising a Palestinian state as “a positive contribution” toward ending the war.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said July 23, “This recognition is not against anyone, it is not against the Israeli people,” he said. “It is an act in favour of peace, justice and moral consistency.”

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told The Associated Press that while the country has supported the establishment of a Palestinian state for decades, recognition is “a card that you can play once.”

“We used to think that recognition would come at the end of a process,” he said. “Now we have realised that recognition should come as an impetus, as a strengthening of a process.”

What are the implications of recognition?

While dozens of countries have recognised Palestine, none of the major Western powers has done so, and it is unclear how much of a difference the move by these other countries might make.

Even so, their recognition marks a significant accomplishment for the Palestinians, who believe it confers international legitimacy on their struggle. Little would likely change on the ground in the short term. Peace talks are stalled, and Israel’s hardline government has dug its heels in against Palestinian statehood.

Israel often responds to foreign countries’ decisions deemed as going against its interests by summoning those countries’ ambassadors and also punishing the Palestinians through measures such as freezing tax transfers to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.