Macron's Palestine Gambit
To say that the reaction was mixed would be an understatement. While both the United States and Israel openly criticized and rejected it, the terrorist group Hamas "congratulated French President Macron's recognition of a Palestinian state."
In his July 24 letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Macron said that he would make the formal statement at the UN General Assembly in New York this September.[1] France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a high-level (although less high-level than the hosts wanted) UN conference in New York on July 28-29 on the "peaceful resolution of the Palestinian issue and the implementation of a two-state solution."[2] With the announcement, France became the first member of the G-7 group of advanced industrialized democracies to recognize a Palestinian state although a year ago European states Spain, Ireland and Norway took the same step (Sweden had been the first Western European state to do so back in 2014).
It has long been the position of both the United States and Israel that any formal recognition of a Palestinian state is to be part of a bilateral peace process between the two sides – the culmination of a process, not its predecessor. France and the more than 140 countries that already have done so are recognizing a country with undefined borders and entirely hypothetical political and security dimensions.
And while Macron said that "the state of Palestine must be established, its existence guaranteed, and through its demilitarization and full recognition of the state of Israel, allowed to contribute to the security of the entire region," neither demilitarization nor full recognition of the state of Israel are conditions that Hamas accepts. France is even trying to get condemnation of Hamas by Arab states at the upcoming UN Conference.[3] So why is Hamas pleased and why did Macron take this step?
Obviously, for Hamas this European recognition is seen as a direct result of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel by Hamas. The recognition, despite any reservations or caveats attached by European diplomats, is seen as an advance for the Palestinian cause and justification or indirect approval that Hamas's action that day was not only warranted but yielded concrete international results, without Hamas having made any political concessions of any sort.[4] The Hamas feeling is that the Palestinian street will regard this French step as a clear Hamas success rather than as the result anything its rivals in the PLO have done.
For Macron's France, the decision is a far cry from when France was an early supporter of the Jewish state. In the 1950s and 60s, France not only sold weapons to Israel, including the all-important advanced Mirage III fighter, but was a key partner in the Israeli nuclear program. Both states shared at the time concerns about Arab nationalism as Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser was a major supporter of Algerian insurgents waging guerrilla war against the French Army. When de Gaulle imposed an arms embargo only days before the Six Day War in 1967, he broke a military and security partnership that had lasted for almost 15 years.
Some observers blame Qatar, the great Arab patron of Hamas, for Macron's decision.[5] They point to the February 2024 announcement that Qatar would invest ten billion euros in France between 2024 and 2030. Qatar has also been aggressive in pushing its agenda throughout Europe, by fair means or foul, including an initiative that was dubbed "Qatargate" as the wealthy emirate reportedly bribed deputies and staff at the European Parliament since 2019 to favor Qatari policies.[6]
But while I am sure that many Europeans are susceptible to Qatari financial blandishments, there is a more plausible explanation for Macron's stance. Just days before the Palestine statement, an Institut Français d'Opinion Publique (IFOP) poll revealed that Macron's popularity had slumped to its lowest level since he was elected in 2017.[7] Only 19 percent supported him and the decline was particularly pronounced among those who re-elected him as president in 2022. The next French presidential elections are less than two years away, scheduled for April 2027.
Macron's decision makes sense when one examines the deep changes occurring within the French – and indeed in other European countries – electorate.[8] The constant flood of migrants into Europe, many of them Muslims or Arabs (or both) particularly hostile to Jews, is changing the voting demographics of Europe. A rough division is slowly emerging: migrants (especially Muslims) generally support leftist political parties.[9]
In the United Kingdom, Muslims tended to vote for Labour and leftist splinter parties, in Germany for Die Linke and other leftist parties, in France, they favor (74 percent) La France Insoumise (LFI) and other leftists. Throughout the continent one can see the hollowing out of supposedly centrist parties with a strengthening at opposite ends of the political spectrum: migrant/leftist coalitions versus native/rightist coalitions.[10]
Macron's Palestine decision then seems the worst of both worlds for an ostensible centrist. It is an irritant to Israel and to the Americans while at the same time only whetting the appetites of the Islamo-Left. The decision not only helps Hamas in the Territories; it also empowers Islamists in Europe and in France.
Ironically it is now the European Right that tends to be philosemitic or at least less hostile to the state of Israel. In France, of course, the nationalist space is dominated by Macron's great rival the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen. Having demonized the political right for so long, it is hard for Macron and his ilk to move to the right too much. They have more space to the left and attempting to appease Muslim voters, with their deeply antisemitic worldview, is far easier than trying to please the (much smaller) Jewish electorate.[11] It is not that Macron is an antisemite, he is not, but that he and others in Europe are politicians who think they understand the demographic writing on the wall.[12]
President Trump put it succinctly when he described Macron's decision this way: "Here's the good news. What he says doesn't matter."[13] That is mostly true when it comes to politics and diplomacy in the Middle East. But what does matter and extraordinarily dangerous is the demographic shift occurring in Europe and the political ramifications that it will have. This is not good news for Israel, that "the West" will become more hostile but the worst news will be to Western nations themselves. States and societies will be stressed and fractured as never before. Some talk alarmingly of civil war in France or the UK.[14] That may be a step too far but rather than posturing that they are trying to secure peace in the Holy Land, Macron or his successor may find himself/herself much more involved in trying to secure a shaky peace at home. Will that be a two or three or four state solution?
*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.
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