France could recognise the state of Palestine in June, 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron has admitted, sparking both celebration and condemnation from Ramallah and Tel Aviv.
In an interview broadcast on France 5, Wednesday, President Macron said: “We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months.”
Macron added that the step could be officially announced at a planned conference on implementation the two-state solution for Israeli-Palestinian conflict, expected to take place in New York.
“Our goal is to chair this conference (on Palestine) with Saudi Arabia sometime in June, where we could finalise this movement of mutual recognition by several parties,” he said.
His remarks come amid growing international calls for a political resolution to the genocidal war Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 50,000 people since October 2023, and the wider Israeli-Palestinian war.
In February 2024, Macron said recognising a Palestinian state is “not a taboo for France,” underlining that such a move is a moral and political necessity.
“We owe it to the Palestinians, whose aspirations have been trampled on for too long. We owe it to the Israelis who experienced the greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century. We owe it to a region that yearns to escape the promoters of chaos and the sowers of revenge,” he said at the time.
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Currently, 147 of the 193 UN member states recognise the state of Palestine.
Last May, Spain, Ireland, and Norway joined the list, bringing the total number of EU countries granting recognition to 10. Others examples include Bulgaria, Cyprus, Malta, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and Romania.
Several other European countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, and Belarus, have also recognised Palestinian statehood.
Reaction from the Holy Land
Palestine on Thursday welcomed France’s plan to recognise a Palestinian state in June.
A Foreign Ministry statement called the French plan “a step in the right direction to protect the two-state solution and achieve peace.”
Israel on the other hand condemned the news claiming it was a “prize for terrorism.”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced Macron’s announcement in a post on X.
“A unilateral recognition of a fictional Palestinian state, by any country, in the reality that we all know, will be a prize for terror and a boost for Hamas .. These kind of actions will not bring peace, security and stability in our region closer — but the opposite: they only push them further away.”
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
