{"id":366260,"date":"2025-08-23T03:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T03:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/366260\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T03:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T03:18:10","slug":"within-france-recognition-of-palestine-as-a-state-is-disarming-hamas-the-sole-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/366260\/","title":{"rendered":"Within France Recognition of Palestine as a State: Is Disarming Hamas the Sole Answer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last July, on the 25th to be exact, Emmanuel Macron announced his stance to finally<\/a> recognise the state of Palestine on his social media account X<\/a>, making it an official public statement. There, Macron stated that he will declare the recognition formally this September, during the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. His proactive movement as the face of France and a G7 member has sparked many opinions all around the world, specifically from their fellow G7 acquaintance, the US, with their current president Donald Trump who criticised that his decision \u201cdoesn\u2019t carry weight\u201d (Sutherland, 2025<\/a>). Opposition has also started appearing, nonetheless from Netanyahu himself, the Prime Minister of Israel, who condemns Macron\u2019s bold decision, saying that it \u2018rewards terror\u2019 to Israel\u2019s sovereignty and will increase the antisemitism movement (BFMTV, 2025<\/a>; Irish, 2025<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As the French President\u2019s declaration is based on the urgency of the deadly humanitarian crisis and free-speech ever since the 7th October 2023, Macron distresses an immediate cease-fire to prevent more casualties from the destruction of innocent Palestinians civilians, humanitarian workers, and journalists\u2014the same tone and objective he also expressed during the dialogue exchange with<\/a> Indonesian students back in Jakarta, 28 May 2025<\/a>. In his statement, he emphasises that a two state solution is necessary and accentuates the necessity of Hamas disarmament in order to cease both state\u2019s military confrontation. Although the written statement mentions the name of the Palestinian<\/a> Authority\u2019s president<\/a>\u2014as to show honest intention and full support\u2014, the point within which Hamas has to be disarmed has been escalating discourses and debates: whether it is the most feasible and reasonable approach to create a permanent peace for Palestine and Israel or not.<\/p>\n

The use of dense population<\/p>\n

Through the perspective of the Israeli and the US authorities, multiple accusations have come from them, incriminating Hamas\u2019 detrimental movement of using the dense civilian population as their<\/a> shield in Gaza<\/a>. According to AIPAC, a website of the Israel and American Public Affairs Committee, Hamas is said to have deliberately placed themselves in the middle of 823,407 (World Population<\/a> Review, 2025) people in Gaza<\/a>, putting Palestinians in a vulnerable position to the bombardment effect that Israel, according to them, goes \u2018above and beyond to avoid civilian casualties\u2019 (AIPAC, 2025). However, when we see the data received from the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHAOPT), as of January 2025<\/a> there have been 47,354 fatalities, 10,000 missing Palestinians under the rubble of their crushed houses, along with 111,563 others injured. If there have been many acts of avoidance\u2014per what AIPAC (2025) informed, then it is obviously a must to reconsider their statement since the casualties of Palestinian people in Gaza are almost 36 times higher than Israel\u2019s total casualties. Furthermore, if Hamas is being accused of placing its military system in a highly dense, populated area with innocent civilians, then why is Israel\u2019s military base also located in the most densely populated areas of Israel, which is Tel Aviv, with a population<\/a> reaching 4,6 million (World Population Review, 2025)<\/a>. This accusation is highly questionable and rhetorical to themselves, on why, coincidentally or not, the Israeli government is also putting their civilians as a human shield toward attacks.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s violation: targeting Hamas or the Palestinians?<\/p>\n

It has been clear enough to understand Macron\u2019s idea of Hamas disarmament is to initiate a cease-fire as soon as possible to prevent further destruction of innocent civilians\u2019 lives, humanitarian aid, and killing of journalists following the 7 October 2023 attack. However, a female journalist named Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in 2022 while wearing a press vest and helmet<\/a> (Nashed, 2025). What makes this contentious is how the tragedy does not have any correlation with Hamas nor Gaza, since Hamas originated in the Gaza strip and the journalist was reporting an Israel army raid in Jenin, at the Church of Nativity in the West Bank (Gold, 2025<\/a>). Israel\u2019s violation of the ceasefire also puts further question and doubt whether the disarmament of Hamas would stop Palestinians\u2019 deaths and injuries. The most recent ceasefire, declared back on 15 January, was violated by Israeli military forces over 350 times (Abouaisha et al., 2025<\/a>), with the last attack on 18 August killing 51 people including 7 aid seekers (Aljazeera, 2025<\/a>). Disarming Hamas, as the sole military force currently operating in Gaza, technically would leave the Palestinian population there without any means of defense, which raises serious concerns about whether they could trust Israel not to launch further attacks in the absence of armed resistance\u2014given Israel\u2019s history of military violations.<\/p>\n

France in regards to Palestine<\/p>\n

It cannot be denied that France has had participated in many occasion of diplomatic and mediating both parties for many times, such as the post-six days war in 1967 where France was also opposed and condemned Israel\u2019s gradual annexation<\/a> of Palestinian territory<\/a>, as it violates international<\/a> law<\/a> and UN Resolution 181<\/a>, infringes on the rights of a nation, exacerbates the situation, and increases the possibility of an increasingly dangerous conflict. France\u2019s recent ban on arms<\/a> exportation to Israel<\/a>, air-drops aids in Gaza<\/a>, and requests of humanitarian<\/a> as well as journalists<\/a> reporting in the Gaza strip<\/a> also showed their growing concern toward the ceasefire of both parties. But given the track records of Israel violation to international treaties, these efforts raise a pressing concern: how can France ensure the safety of their own representatives on the Gaza ground, and how can they protect the safeness of the Palestinians in Gaza, if Israel themselves continues to not agree with the Palestinians being granted the status as a recognised sovereign state and security protections?<\/p>\n

Is disarming the one and only solution?<\/p>\n

The two-state solution to a certain extent raises a fundamental contradiction in Israel\u2019s position. If Netanyahu and the rest of Israel are against the recognition of Palestine as a state, including the right to have or to preserve an official defense force, then how is it expected to guarantee the stable safety of Palestinian people? Because by opposing both statehood and their existence of any military structure, Israel objectively denies Palestine both political legitimacy and self-defense capacity.<\/p>\n

Macron should reconsider France\u2019s approach and rethink the aftermath possibility for Palestine and Israel post the disarmament, knowing that asymmetrical power clearly exists between these side-to-side states. Without addressing the structural violence and placing the de-escalation solely on Palestinians, France risks offering only symbolic recognition that potentially leaves Palestinians more vulnerable than before. The resolution is still far from perfect, but it should be recommunicated for the better prospect of Palestinians\u2019 life, specifically their security of their existence\u2014their beings, their history and their heritage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last July, on the 25th to be exact, Emmanuel Macron announced his stance to finally recognise the state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,16419,2194,25793,837,391,1814,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-366260","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","11":"tag-front","12":"tag-gaza","13":"tag-international-law","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-opinion","16":"tag-palestine","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115075920874833327","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366260","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=366260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}