What he is aiming for, first and foremost, is to assert Europe’s position on the international stage. In his battle for the recognition of Palestine, Emmanuel Macron’s primary objective is to counter the idea that Europeans do not respect international law in the Holy Land as they do in Ukraine, that their principles are of a variable geometry, and that they support Benjamin Netanyahu no less than Donald Trump does.
This is what he had in mind last week when France and Saudi Arabia had their joint declaration in favour of the two-state solution adopted by the UN General Assembly. This is what he will be thinking about next week when he announces that France recognises Palestine because, faced with Vladimir Putin and the United States moving farther away from Europe, Europe needs friends and allies.
Europe cannot afford to let Chinese investment and Russian propaganda turn Africa, Latin America and whole regions of Asia against the West as a whole. It must distance itself from the White House by joining the growing refusal to allow the Israeli far right to continue the destruction of Gaza and the colonisation of the West Bank.
Followed by many EU capitals and MEPs who have just called for the recognition of Palestine, Emmanuel Macron is simply driven by a new raison d’état, that of Europe, but that is not all.
This young president belongs to the last generation that the genocide of European Jews left its mark on. This man is anything but indifferent to the moral debt created by the Holocaust, and it is also because he is deeply attached to Israel that he wants to contribute to its coexistence with a Palestinian state.
Like half of Israelis and a large proportion of Jews in Europe and America, Emmanuel Macron believes that only by doing justice to the Palestinians can Israel ensure its long-term survival. Just as much as the Jews, the Palestinians have a right to a state. Israel must now accept the partition that the Palestinians and Arab states were wrong to reject in 1947.
Borders, economy, security – everything is negotiable, but what is not negotiable, any more than Israel’s existence itself, is international recognition of Palestine, the essential starting point for future coexistence.
Emmanuel Macron is simply stating the obvious, and when Benjamin Netanyahu responds that recognising Palestine would only strengthen Hamas, he is overlooking two things. The first is that the coexistence of two states would be the historic defeat of those fanatics who do not want two states because they want to destroy Israel.
The other is that there is no solution for Israel other than the two-state solution because, without Palestine, what will become of the Palestinians?
Even at the cost of war crimes on a daily basis, Israel cannot exterminate them.
Nor can Israel expel them because no country would want to accept them, even if they asked.
Israel cannot settle them in reserves, because that is what led to the killings on 7 October, and Israel cannot offer them Israeli citizenship either, because they would soon be numerous enough to make Jews a minority.
Apartheid, then?
That would be the surest way for Israel to commit suicide, and rather than insulting him day in and day out, Benjamin Netanyahu should thank Emmanuel Macron for defending Israel by defending Europe and Palestine.
Photo: ©United Nations
