French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that France plans to recognize Palestine as a state in June of this year. In an interview with France 5 television on Wednesday, he said he aimed to finalize this at a United Nations conference on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which his country will co-chair with Saudi Arabia in June.
"We must move towards recognition and we will do this in the coming months. I am not doing it to please anyone. I will do it because at some point it will be right," Macron said, according to A2 CNN.
For the Palestinian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Varsen Aghabekian Shahin, France's recognition would be "a step in the right direction in line with protecting the rights of the Palestinian people and the two-state solution."
But Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said any "unilateral recognition" of a Palestinian state would be an "encouragement for Hamas."
"A 'unilateral recognition' of an imaginary Palestinian state, by any country, in the reality we all know, will be a price for terror and an incentive for Hamas. These kinds of actions will not bring peace, security and stability closer to our region – but the opposite: they only push them further away ," he wrote on X, A2 CNN reports.
Palestine has been recognized as a sovereign state by 146 countries out of 193 UN members so far, with Armenia, Slovenia, Ireland, Norway, Spain, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados joining their ranks last year.
However, despite growing international support for Palestinian statehood, several major Western countries such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany have rejected recognition, writes A2 CNN.
Macron said he envisioned a "collective dynamic," enabling several countries in the Middle East to also recognize the state of Israel.
Countries that do not recognize Israel include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
Macron said that recognizing Palestine as a state would allow France "to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel's right to exist, as is the case with Iran, and to commit to collective security in the region."
France has long advocated a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, continuing its policy after the October 7, 2023 attack by the Palestinian armed group Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major political shift and could antagonize Israel, which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.
On a recent trip to Egypt, Macron held talks with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah II, making it clear that he was strongly opposed to any relocation or annexation in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. (A2 Televizion)
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