As pressure mounts ahead of a key UN summit, France is weighing whether to recognise a Palestinian state – a move President Emmanuel Macron says could come within months. The two-state solution has been the guiding principle of French diplomacy in the Middle East for 70 years, and while the Palestinian issue has sometimes been sidelined, it's never really left the agenda.
"We must move towards recognition [of a Palestinian state] and we will do so in the coming months," the French president said in an interview broadcast on television channel France 5.
He added that the move could be made at the UN conference due to be held in New York in June.
"I will do it because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognise Israel in turn," Macron said.
Such recognition, he added, would allow France "to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel's right to exist, which is the case with Iran, and to commit ourselves to collective security in the region".
Given its pioneering role in the Palestinian issue, this announcement may seem somewhat belated – 147 of the 193 member states of the United Nations already recognise the Palestinian state, including 12 of the 27 members of the European Union.
On 12 October 2023, a few days after the Hamas terror attack, before travelling to Israel, Macron had reiterated France's historic position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They were "essential guarantees for Israel's security" and "a state for the Palestinians".
In 1947, Paris voted in favour of the partition plan for Palestine adopted by the UN, then recognised the State of Israel a few months later. Ties were forged between the two countries.
During the Suez Crisis in 1956, both Paris and London sided with Tel Aviv to invade Egypt after the canal had been nationalised. And in 1957, France helped Israel develop a nuclear reactor.
With the Arab countries of its colonial empire fighting for their independence, France saw Israel as an ally. Moreover, the recent memory of the Holocaust loomed large in the French national consciousness.
France's Arab policy
But in 1958, General de Gaulle, back in power, put an end to the nuclear collaboration with Israel and introduced what was known as "France's Arab policy".
In 1967, Israel launched the Six-Day War. De Gaulle had warned that France would support Tel Aviv in the event of aggression, but not if Israel was the one to launch hostilities. Following the outbreak of the war he kept his word, and put in place an embargo on arms destined for Israel.
The Six-Day War began with an Israeli air assault on Egypt and Syria. Israel also launched a ground offensive in the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, capturing these territories – although the Sinai Peninsula was later returned to Egypt.
France voted in favour of UN Security Council Resolution 242 calling for Israel to withdraw from the newly occupied territories. For de Gaulle, this was "an occupation that cannot go ahead without oppression, repression and expulsion".
In November that year, he declared at a press conference that the Jewish people were an "elite people, self-assured and domineering," provoking the anger of Tel Aviv.
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France's rapprochement with Arab countries – and therefore with Palestine – continued under President Georges Pompidou, elected in 1969, who maintained the arms embargo on Israel.
The seven-year term of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, from 1974 to 1981, saw this continue, and escalate. In October 1974, Paris voted in favour of recognising the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the main interlocutor for Palestine within the UN.
Under Giscard d'Estaing, minister of foreign affairs Jean Sauvagnargues became the first member of a Western government to meet with the head of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, in Beirut on 21 October, 1974.
According to the 22 October, 1974 edition of French newspaper Le Monde: "The minister said that 'any settlement in the Middle East must take account of the Palestinian settlement. All the parties involved realise this. Mr Arafat's credit and role can guide the PLO towards political action that takes account of international realities'.
"After saying that the Palestinians had to be 'rescued from violence and despair, the minister declared: 'Mr Arafat made a very good impression on me. He struck me as realistic and moderate, but certainly aware of the rights imposed on him by the situation. Mr Arafat has the stature of a statesman'."
The following year, the PLO opened an Information and Liaison Office in Paris – a first in Europe.
Giscard d'Estaing said: "The core of the problem is to consider that there can be no lasting peace in the Middle East unless the Palestinian question is settled fairly... Once the international community recognises the existence of a Palestinian people, that people must be able to have a homeland."
In 1980, the Venice Declaration agreed by the economic committee of the European Economic Community (EEC), of which France was a member, recognised the right of the Palestinian people to self-government and the right of the PLO to participate in peace initiatives – an declaration strongly denounced by Israel.
France and Arafat
When François Mitterrand took over as president of France in 1981, the country's Arab policy did not come to a halt – quite the contrary, to the displeasure of France's Jewish community, which had viewed the Socialist Mitterrand as a likely fervent defender of Israel.
In 1982, as the first president to visit Israel, he reiterated before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, France's position of the past 35 years: backing a two-state solution. He declared: "Dialogue presupposes that each party can pursue its rights to the full, which for the Palestinians may, when the time comes, mean a state."
It was also under Mitterrand that France took part in the evacuation of Arafat from Beirut in 1982, when the PLO leader and his troops were surrounded by the Israeli army.
"Escorted by two French ships, one American and one Greek, Yasser Arafat left Beirut on Monday, 30 August aboard a Greek pleasure boat that would take him to Athens... Mr Arafat, wearing a black and white keffiyeh, arrived at the entrance to the port of Beirut shortly before 11am in Mr Wazzan's armoured limousine," according to archival documents from the time.
"He was preceded by a jeep of legionnaires from the 2nd REP [the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment, the airborne regiment of the Foreign Legion in the French Army] and followed by two self-propelled gunships from the French intervention force.
"During his farewell visit to the Lebanese prime minister, Mr Arafat paid tribute to France, 'which not only undertook to facilitate the evacuation, but was involved in the entire process of disengagement. I am grateful to François Mitterrand for his actions throughout this period, because he remained a man of his word.' added Mr Arafat.
"At the entrance to the port, which was occupied by American marines, French and Lebanese snipers had taken up positions and were watching the buildings to avoid any incidents."
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At the end of the following year, Paris again played an active part in evacuating Arafat, who was this time surrounded in Tripoli, Lebanon, by the Syrian army on the land side and the Israeli army on the sea.
Arafat was received by Mitterrand on his first visit to France in 1989, despite protests from French Jewish institutions. For the French president, the country's interests came before those of one community.
During an interview, Mitterrand persuaded Arafat to state that the PLO charter – which stated that "armed struggle is the only path to the liberation of Palestine" – was "obsolete". This paved the way for the Oslo Accords of 1993, agreements between Israel and the PLO that established a peace process through a mutually negotiated two-state solution, and limited self-governance for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip via the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
This mutual recognition was reversed by Israel in July 2024, when the Knesset passed a resolution rejecting the principle of a Palestinian state, considering it an existential threat.
‘This is provocation!'
Jacques Chirac took over the reins of power from Mitterrand in 1995. He became a hero in the Arab world after his altercation with the Israeli security services during a visit to the Old City of Jerusalem in 1996, when they prevented him from shaking hands with local Palestinian residents and shopkeepers and attempted to hustle him down an alley away from them.
"I've had enough! What do you want? Me to go back to my plane and go back to France, is that what you want? Then let them go. This is provocation!" he shouted.
Just a few months earlier he had been applauded by Israel for acknowledging the French government's responsibility for the Vel'd'Hiv round-up in 1942, the mass arrest of Jewish people in Paris by French police at the behest of the Nazi occupiers.
Chirac was also close to Arafat, who came to France for medical treatment in October 2004, arranged by the president. When he died, a solemn tribute worthy of a head of state was paid by France.
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From 2005 onwards, France became less active on the Palestinian issue, despite a renewed cycle of violence. Although numerous polemics about anti-Semitism in France were initiated from Tel Aviv and Washington, while Israel was withdrawing from the Gaza Strip Chirac welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Paris.
But the break in France's Arab policy came about mainly under Nicolas Sarkozy, elected in 2007. During his five-year term, the Israeli-Palestinian issue stalled more notably than ever before, even if Paris voted for Palestine to join Unesco in 2011 and for it to be recognised as a non-member observer of the UN in 2012.
During François Hollande's presidential campaign, he stated in his manifesto that he wanted Palestine to be recognised as a state. In November 2013, during a visit to the Middle East, he called for a solution of "two states for two peoples" as well as a halt to construction in the Occupied Territories and for Jerusalem to be shared as the capital of both states.
In December 2014, after a demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had been banned in Paris the previous summer, the National Assembly adopted a non-binding resolution calling on "the government to recognise the State of Palestine with a view to achieving a definitive settlement of the conflict".
In January 2017, faced with a Netanyahu government that was becoming increasingly ferocious towards the Palestinians, Paris hosted a French Initiative for Peace in the Middle East during which France acknowledged that a "two-state solution is in serious danger" – a commendable gesture that failed to produce concrete results.
'A step in the right direction'
Macron, who came to power in 2017, has done nothing to reverse this trend – at least in part because, even prior to the attacks of 7 October 2023, criticising Israel in France raised fears of accusations of anti-Semitism.
Macron has alienated several diplomats for adopting policies openly aligned with Tel Aviv. In November 2023, a dozen of these diplomats sent a note to the Élysée Palace in which they criticised the pro-Israeli turn taken by the French president since October 2023. They wrote that ‘[the government's] position in favour of Israel at the start of the crisis is misunderstood in the Middle East and is at odds with [France's] traditionally balanced position between Israelis and Palestinians'.
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Despite condemnations from the UN, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, it took 18 months of war in the Gaza Strip and more than 50,000 deaths before Macron declared on 9 April that he was considering recognising the State of Palestine.
The Palestinian Authority has welcomed the French president's announcement. Recognition by France "would be a step in the right direction, in line with the defence of the rights of the Palestinian people and the two-state solution," the Palestinian minister of state for foreign affairs, Varsen Aghabekian Shahin, told French news agency AFP.
Were France to recognise the State of Palestine, it would be the first member of the G7 and the first permanent member of the UN Security Council to do so – which could have a knock-on effect on other EU member states. Given that the EU is Israel's biggest trading partner, if the latter were to back the two-state solution, it would be throwing its weight behind what French diplomacy has been advocating for since 1947.
This article was adapted from the original version in French.
