US ‘strongly rejects' France's plan to recognise Palestine as a state: ‘Reckless decision serves Hamas propaganda'
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that France will officially recognise a Palestinian state during the UN General Assembly in September.
'The United States strongly rejects @EmmanuelMacron 's plan to recognize a Palestinian state at the @UN general assembly,' said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
'This reckless decision only serves Hamas propaganda and sets back peace. It is a slap in the face to the victims of October 7th,' he added.
Macron, who unveiled the decision on X, published a letter sent to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confirming France's intention to press ahead with Palestinian recognition and work to convince other partners to follow suit.
'True to its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the state of Palestine,' Macron said.
'I will make this solemn announcement at the United Nations General Assembly next September.'
According to an AFP tally, the latest developments bring the total number of countries that recognise or intend to recognise Palestinian statehood to at least 142, despite strong opposition from Israel and the United States.
If it proceeds, France would become the most influential European nation and the first among the G7 group of wealthy democracies to formally recognise a Palestinian state.
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the 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,' he said.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz described the move as "a disgrace and a surrender to terrorism," adding that Israel would not allow the establishment of a 'Palestinian entity that would harm our security, endanger our existence.'
In a diplomatic cable sent in June, the United States expressed its opposition to any unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, warning that such actions could conflict with US foreign policy interests and potentially lead to consequences.
That same month, US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, stated that he no longer believed the establishment of an independent Palestinian state was a current objective of US foreign policy.
US President Donald Trump has himself expressed doubts about a two-state solution, proposing a U.S. takeover of Gaza in February, which was condemned by rights groups, Arab states, Palestinians and the U.N. as a proposal of 'ethnic cleansing'.
Israel has been waging a devastating war in Gaza since the Palestinian militant group Hamas' deadly attack on Israel in October 2023 and says recognising a Palestinian state now would be equivalent to rewarding Hamas.
Thanking France, the Palestinian Authority's Vice President Hussein Al Sheikh said on X that Macron's decision reflected "France's commitment to international law and its support for the Palestinian people's rights to self-determination and the establishment of our independent state."
(With inputs from agencies)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
44 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Daniella Weiss: Settler godmother
In July, British journalist Piers Morgan asked Daniella Weiss, an Israeli settler leader appearing on his show, how she felt about the killing of 20,000 Palestinian children in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Ms. Weiss, dressed in a crisp white button-down shirt and a blue-and-white patterned headscarf, responded with a grin, 'Arabs around should stop attacking Israel.' Mr. Morgan repeated the question six more times, before pressing her: 'I will give you one last chance to offer some sympathy, or empathy or sorrow about the deaths of 20,000 children in Gaza. Are you capable of doing that?' Ms. Weiss's initial response was a laugh, followed by repeated claims that Arab children are taught 'to hate Jews'. 'You know what, you couldn't give a damn, could you? You don't care and all you want is all the Palestinians gone,' said a visibly irritated Mr. Morgan before wrapping up the session, with a smiling Ms. Weiss remarking, 'The audience will judge'. Ms. Weiss, a prominent figure in the settler movement since the 1970s, which has promoted illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, returned to the spotlight in recent years after Hamas's October 7 attack. After the war began, Ms. Weiss stepped up her campaign to resume Jewish settlements in Gaza, while settlers went on rampages in the West Bank against the local Palestinian communities. Born in 1945 in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv, then part of the British-ruled Palestine, Daniella Weiss grew up attending a religious school in Ramat Gan before studying English literature and philosophy at Bar-Ilan University. Her father, born in the U.S., and mother, born in Poland, were members of Lehi(the Fighters of the Freedom of Israel), a Zionist paramilitary group founded in 1940, in Palestine. The 'miracle' of 1967 After the 1967 war, in which Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Gaza and Sinai from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria, a new wave of Zionist activism pushed for settlements in the occupied territories. Ms. Weiss, who described the outcome of the war as 'a miracle... in the dimensions of a Biblical scene', joined Gush Emunim, a right-wing extremist settler movement. 'I felt that I wanted to be an active part in this miraculous happening,' she later said about her association with the settler movement. Ms. Weiss and her family settled in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, where she served as the Mayor from 1996 to 2007. Since the 1970s, settlements have flourished in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Today, roughly 4,50,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and 2,50,000 in East Jerusalem. In 2005, more than 10,000 settlers in Gaza were pulled back by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, following five years of violent Hamas resistance during the Second Intifada — a decision Ms. Weiss calls 'a mistake'. She claims hundreds of Jews are today ready to move into Gaza immediately if they get government permission. A close ally of Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's far-right Finance Minister who advocates the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and its resettlement with Jews, Ms. Weiss is currently affiliated with the Nachala Settlement Movement, which works to expand Jewish settlements in disputed areas. Nachala, which calls for 'conquest, immigration and settlement in Gaza', says it has already registered 500 families for future settlement in the enclave. The group wants the war to continue 'until the enemy is destroyed'. Its main slogan: 'Twenty years later, we are returning to the Gaza Strip.' In November 2024, Ms. Weiss went to northern Gaza in an IDF-sanctioned trip to survey locations for Jewish resettlements. Since the October 7 attacks, violence by Jewish settlers against the local Palestinian population has surged. Sixteen Palestinian communities have been driven from their land and 175 Palestinians killed. The escalating attacks prompted the Canadian and British governments to impose sanctions on Jewish settler leaders, including Ms. Weiss. But Ms. Weiss does not seem to care. For her, the borders of the Jewish nation stretch from 'the Euphrates in the east to the Nile in the southwest' (this would include a host of modern states in West Asia and Africa such as Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and part of Egypt). As for Gaza, she is unequivocal. 'Gaza Arabs will not stay in the Gaza Strip. Who will stay? Jews,' she said recently. 'The world is wide. Africa is big. Canada is big. The world will absorb the people of Gaza. How do we do it? We encourage it.'
News18
an hour ago
- News18
Stanford Daily Sues Trump Admin Over ‘Ideological Deportation' of Pro‑Palestinian Students
Stanford University's student-run newspaper, The Stanford Daily, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging that immigration policies are being used to deport international students for expressing pro-Palestinian views — a move critics say violates First Amendment rights. News18 Mobile App -
Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
Europe and Ukraine press US ahead of Trump-Putin talks
European officials were reported to have presented their own Ukraine peace proposals to the United States on Saturday as President Donald Trump prepared for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on ending the war. Trump announced on Friday that he would meet Putin in Alaska on August 15, saying the parties, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were close to a deal that could resolve the three-and-a-half-year conflict. Details of the potential deal have yet to be announced, but Trump said it would involve 'some swapping of territories to the betterment of both'. It could require Ukraine to surrender significant parts of its territory – an outcome Kyiv and its European allies say would only encourage Russian aggression. US Vice President JD Vance met Ukrainian and European allies in Britain on Saturday to discuss Trump's push for peace. The Wall Street Journal said European officials had presented a counter-proposal, including demands that a cease-fire must take place before any other steps are taken and that any territory exchange must be reciprocal, with firm security guarantees. 'You can't start a process by ceding territory in the middle of fighting,' it quoted one European negotiator as saying. European officials contacted by Reuters were unable to confirm the report. Zelenskyy said the meeting was constructive. 'All our arguments were heard,' he said in his evening address to Ukrainians. 'The path to peace for Ukraine should be determined together and only together with Ukraine, this is key principle,' he said. He had earlier rejected any territorial concessions, saying 'Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier'. French President Emmanuel Macron also said Ukraine must play a role in any negotiations. 'Ukraine's future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians, who have been fighting for their freedom and security for over three years now,' he wrote on X after what he said were calls with Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 'Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake.' Zelenskyy has made a flurry of calls with Ukraine's allies since Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff's visit to Moscow on Wednesday which Trump described as having achieved 'great progress'. 'Clear steps are needed, as well as maximum coordination between us and our partners,' Zelenskyy said in a post on X earlier on Saturday. Ukraine and the European Union have pushed back on proposals that they view as ceding too much to Putin, whose troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, citing what Moscow called threats to Russia's security from a Ukrainian pivot towards the West. Kyiv and its Western allies say the invasion is an imperial-style land grab. After the talks in Britain, Axios reporter Barak Ravid cited a US official as saying: 'Today's hours-long meetings produced significant progress toward President Trump's goal of bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.' It was not clear what, if anything, had been agreed. Moscow has previously claimed four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014. Russian forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions and Russia has demanded that Ukraine pull out its troops from the parts of all four of them that they still control. Ukraine says its troops still have a small foothold in Russia's Kursk region a year after its troops crossed the border to try to gain leverage in any negotiations. Russia said it had expelled Ukrainian troops from Kursk in April. Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, described the current peace push as 'the first more or less realistic attempt to stop the war'. 'At the same time, I remain extremely sceptical about the implementation of the agreements, even if a truce is reached for a while. And there is virtually no doubt that the new commitments could be devastating for Ukraine,' she said. Fierce fighting is raging along the more than 1,000-km (620-mile) front line along eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian forces hold around a fifth of the country's territory. Russian troops are slowly advancing in Ukraine's east, but their summer offensive has so far failed to achieve a major breakthrough, Ukrainian military analysts say. Ukrainians remain defiant. 'Not a single serviceman will agree to cede territory, to pull out troops from Ukrainian territories,' Olesia Petritska, 51, told Reuters as she gestured to hundreds of small Ukrainian flags in the Kyiv central square commemorating fallen soldiers.
