France recognises Palestine as a state: A landmark action that infuriates Israel • FRANCE 24

Let’s cross end live to Jerusalem. We’re going to speak to our correspondent who joins us from there, Noga Tanapolski. Noga, bring us um first then a sense of the reaction there from politicians to the people. Good morning, Stuart. Well, it’s a holiday here. No one is going to work. It’s the Jewish New Year, and so reaction has been significantly more muted than it was when the UK made a similar announcement just two days ago. and Israeli officials ended up calling uh UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer a supporter of Nazis. Uh so this time has been a bit muted. Um the Israeli government clearly is on the back foot here because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it his calling card to promise Israelis that there will never ever be a Palestinian state. And even if a majority of Israelis don’t follow him in that direction, he has made this promise to his um most extremist ministers who probably are a majority of his ministers these days and his diminished cabinet. And as a result, in order to maintain power for the next year before there are mandated elections in Israel and in order to hold on to his hope of being able to still control the powers, the levers of power in Israel at least for the next year, Netanyahu has to satisfy these ministers. They are calling for the Israeli imposition of sovereignty over the occupied West Bank as a punitive response against Western nations uh who have declared their recognition of a Palestinian state. The uh newspaper Hararitz, an opposition newspaper today is headlined uh headlined its editorial with a a an article, a column detailing how in fact announcing this sort of sovereignty would punish Israel and not Western states. But the reality is that Prime Minister Netanyahu right now has boxed himself in to a certain extent. Um he does not have the votes in parliament. you need a super majority in the Israeli parliament in the Knesset in order to annex any territory. He doesn’t have the votes. So the best he could probably do for these u most hardline ministers is declare some sort of sovereignty without actually voting on annexation. Um but he needs a US okay even to do that. Um, Gulf nations like the United Arab Emirates that have ties, diplomatic ties to Israel created through the Trump sponsored Abraham Accords have said that that would break the accords from their point of view. So Netanyahu is now going to Washington DC a little bit kind of with hat in hand to request US permission to do something which in de facto would wreck prime uh President Trump’s top foreign policy achievement from his first term. So it’s a bit of a complicated situation. The Israeli people, the regular people on the street here are in fact paying very little attention, if any at all, to all of these declarations across the ocean. The preoccupation among regular Israelis is with this grinding ongoing war. A seventh soldier was uh declared dead this morning, the seventh this week. The hostages preoccupy Israelis and their head is completely elsewhere. No, realistically of course on the ground as you indicated there none of these move by other countries are making any difference. I mean the advance into Gaza City possibly beyond grinds on. That’s right. None of this has an immediate effect on the ground, but we shouldn’t be blind to the effect that it could have moving forward. This recognition will have an impact at some point. This war will have to end. And at that point, recognition of Palestine as a state will have a significant impact. And Israel’s, for example, any Israeli actions in Gaza and possibly even in the West Bank could be considered by all of these countries, the UK and France among, you know, the most important among them as extra legal actions within the territory of a recognized state. This could even further complicate Israel’s diplomatic isolation and certainly complicate the political life of Prime Minister Netanyahu who having again promised Israelis there would never be uh a Palestinian state is now sort of appearing as an emperor without his clothes on. His diplomatic stance has failed and he will at some point have to explain that. Thanks very much our correspondent joining us live there from Jerusalem.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday recognised a Palestinian state at a UN summit aimed at galvanising support for a two-state solution to the Mideast conflict a day ahead of the 2025 UN General Assembly in New York. Macron has spearheaded a move that spurred other Western governments to take the landmark step that has infuriated Israel. France24 correspondent in Jerusalem, Noga Tarnopolsky, reports the latest reactions from Israel.
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