{"id":291707,"date":"2025-07-25T22:33:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T22:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/291707\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T22:33:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T22:33:14","slug":"macron-plan-to-recognise-palestine-puts-pressure-on-starmer-to-choose-a-course-palestinian-territories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/291707\/","title":{"rendered":"Macron plan to recognise Palestine puts pressure on Starmer to choose a course | Palestinian territories"},"content":{"rendered":"

France\u2019s decision to recognise Palestine at the next UN general assembly<\/a> is an attempt to build momentum for change and make a break from the major western powers\u2019 impassivity in the face of Israel\u2019s mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Emmanuel Macron\u2019s declaration, announced in typically dramatic fashion on social media late on Thursday night, draws a line between the paths followed by the US and France over the Gaza war, and significantly raises the pressure on the UK, Germany and other G7 powers to pick a side.<\/p>\n

Macron, Keir Starmer<\/a> and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, held what the UK prime minister described as an \u201cemergency call\u201d on Friday, to coordinate positions. It led to a joint call for Israel to lift its food blockade immediately, an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas. But there was no apparent shift in Merz\u2019s or Starmer\u2019s position on recognition.<\/p>\n

The German government said it had \u201cno plans to recognise a Palestinian state in the short term\u201d. <\/strong>Starmer stuck to his position that statehood would only come as part of a sequence of coordinated steps towards peace.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecognition of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps. I am unequivocal about that,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it must be part of a wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The French argument is that in the absence of any sign of moves towards stopping the war, European governments have to try to break the deadlock with the levers they have to hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt obviously puts huge pressure on the UK to act likewise,\u201d said Victor Kattan, an assistant professor of public international law at Nottingham University. \u201cFrance and the UK are very close allies, and they\u2019ve obviously spoken about this when Macron visited the UK a few weeks back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The continuing shift in western European positions has come at a time when UN officials and increasing numbers of legal experts are accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The international court of justice in The Hague is currently weighing up a genocide charge against Israel, brought by South Africa in December 2023.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s stated intention of recognising Palestine, joining approximately 147 other UN member states, is clearly a reaction to the catastrophic situation in Gaza<\/a>, with deaths from hunger from Israel\u2019s blockade multiplying alongside the relentless toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombing and gunfire.<\/p>\n

World map showing countries that have recognised a Palestinian state<\/a><\/p>\n

Macron\u2019s declaration, however, would do nothing immediate to stop the killing, argued Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University\u2019s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is a mostly symbolic gesture that will annoy the Israelis but ultimately will not change anything on the ground, least of all in Gaza. It does nothing to bring about a ceasefire or to address the catastrophic mass starvation in Gaza, which is not only man-made but engineered as a matter of Israeli policy, or the systematic destruction of Gaza,\u201d Elgindy said.<\/p>\n

He said the only meaningful actions for western countries in the face of Israeli war crimes was to impose trade sanctions and arms embargos. France, like other western states, has not stopped arms supplies to Israel, despite expressions of outrage at Israeli actions.<\/p>\n

Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, argued that to look for immediate results from state recognition was to miss the point.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really the wrong question, and it has led us to where we are today: genocide, mass killing, mass starvation, mass destruction, and the further erosion of the very idea of a two-state solution,\u201d Zomlot said. \u201cIssues of recognition of a people\u2019s legitimate self-determination is an inalienable right.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said no real progress could be made towards ending the conflict until Palestinian statehood was recognised. \u201cThe key message is that the recognition has got to be without ifs and buts and it has got to be immediate and it has got to kickstart a political process that has the potential of ending all this mess we are in,\u201d Zomlot said, adding: \u201cIf not now, when?\u201d<\/p>\n

Macron\u2019s announcement comes in the run-up to a two-day conference on Monday at the UN in New York, hosted by France and Saudi Arabia, delayed by the Israel-Iran war, which is supposed to start work on a blueprint for peace through the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.<\/p>\n

That will be followed by a summit on the issue at the UN general assembly high-level meeting in September, where Macron will formally recognise Palestine. The French hope is he will not be alone, and that other G7 powers will have followed suit by then, building momentum.<\/p>\n

Between then and now, the political pressure on Starmer will be intense, with a brewing mutiny on the issue in the Labour party and in the cabinet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The House of Commons foreign affairs committee published a report<\/a> on Friday arguing the UK \u201cshould now recognise the state of Palestine while there is still a state to recognise\u201d. \u201cAn inalienable right should not be made conditional. The government cannot continue to wait for the perfect time because experience shows that there will never be a perfect time, and in hindsight it is possible to see times when it should have occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gershon Baskin, a former Israeli government adviser and peace activist, argued that the major western powers\u2019 failure to recognise Palestine had contributed to the failure to make progress towards a two-state solution, and was a reflection of the lack of real political will around the world to create the right conditions for peace.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many years can you talk about a two-state solution and only recognise one of them?\u201d said Baskin. \u201cThere\u2019s a need to break out of this duplicity of intentions and actions, so the French making that step is good. It needs to be done along with other G7 members, and members of the European Union that haven\u2019t yet done it. It\u2019s important because it makes a statement \u2013 that the world is committed to a solution to this conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France\u2019s decision to recognise Palestine at the next UN general assembly is an attempt to build momentum for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-291707","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114916255596765708","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}