President Emmanuel Macron announced, on Thursday, July 24, that France would recognize the State of Palestine in September, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He hopes this move will “make a decisive contribution to peace in the Middle East,” as the suffering of the Gaza Strip’s civilian population continually reaches unprecedented levels.
Hubert Védrine, who served as France’s foreign affairs minister between 1997 and 2002 under President Jacques Chirac and was also a diplomatic adviser to Chirac’s predecessor François Mitterrand, supports the current president’s decision. His response to critics of Macron’s move, as he states in an interview with Le Monde, is to ask: “In what way would it have been useful to do nothing?” He added that “it is Netanyahu’s Israel that is becoming increasingly isolated, not France.”
Macron has committed to recognizing the State of Palestine, but Gaza lies in ruins and the Israeli authorities have moved on from the two-state solution. Isn’t the president arriving too late?
Given the appalling situation in Gaza and the lack of prospects, it was becoming dishonorable to do nothing. We can no longer stick to lamentations in the face of famine used as a weapon of war. This recognition of the Palestinian state will have a great moral, but also political, dimension.
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