– M Rafi Ahmed
As hearts melt over the sad state of affairs in the strife-torn Gaza with Palestinians besieging the food aid centres comes the heartening news from the President of France Emmanuel Macron who announced yesterday that France would recognise Palestine as a state, becoming the first of the Group of Seven major industrialised nations to do so. In a surprise statement on X, Macron said that he would make the formal announcement at the U.N. General Assembly in September in New York.
The move is likely to irritate President Trump as he makes his own moves to try to end the war. Most countries recognise Palestine as a nation, but the U.S. and most of its close allies don’t.
“Today the most urgent thing is that the war in Gaza ceases and the civilian population is helped,” Macron wrote in his X page.
After 21 months of devastating war, the lack of available food and water in Gaza is taking a heavy toll on the most vulnerable – the young, the old and the sick. The World Food Program said this week that a third of Gaza’s population was “not eating for multiple days in a row.”
Gaza’s hospitals have struggled to cope with those wounded by Israeli airstrikes and, more recently, by Israeli shootings meant to disperse desperate crowds near food convoys and at aid distribution sites. Now, doctors say that hunger is killing their patients and that the number of children dying of malnutrition has risen sharply in recent days.
According to CBS news portal, the 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 Palestinians seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem and Gaza, the territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel’s government and most of its political class have long been opposed to the Palestinian statehood and now say that it would reward terrorists after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
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 that are now home to more than 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 centres.
It may be noted that France is the biggest and most powerful European country to recognise Palestine. More than 140 countries recognise the Palestinian state, however, the U.S. is not among them. France has Europe’s largest Jewish population and the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, and fighting in the Middle East often spills over into protests or other tensions in France.
France’s foreign minister is co-hosting a conference at the U.N. next week about a two-state solution. Last month, 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.
In this backdrop, the French president offered support for Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and frequently speaks out against antisemitism, but he has grown increasingly frustrated about Israel’s war in Gaza, especially in recent months.
“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.” In a step further, he also posted a letter which he had sent to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about the decision.
[The author is former Indian Express and Deccan Chronicle chief]
