In the middle of the night, early on Tuesday, October 24, 2023, Emmanuel Macron flew to the East with a single idea: to bring a French pillar to the ongoing effort to rebuild peace in the region. France’s game is threefold: express solidarity with Israel struck by terrorism; prevent this conflict from igniting the entire region; advance the solution of a Palestinian state, living side by side and in peace with Israel.
The first stop of the presidential trip was for the Jewish state. It was essential for the president to provide in person France’s moral and diplomatic support to his old friend, struck on October 7 by an Islamist terrorist raid ten times deadlier than that of the Bataclan in Paris. He offered his “condolences, those of a nation which, like you, has mourned young lives, (…) cut short by the savagery of terrorism”. The fact that Israel no longer depends on France for its security has in no way weakened the very strong bilateral ties, with France having the largest Jewish community in Europe, and Israel with hundreds of thousands of French speakers.
“Our two countries are linked by the same mourning,” added Emmanuel Macron alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He spoke of “a war between barbarism and civilization”, promising once again to “destroy” Hamas. But, in the eyes of Emmanuel Macron, Islamist terrorism is a global problem rather than a local one. It therefore requires, in his eyes, a united response from all countries of good will. In front of Benjamin Netanyahu, the French president even went so far as to propose, like what had been done against Daesh, to set up “a coalition” of Western – and perhaps Middle Eastern – countries to fight together against all terrorist movements, starting with Hamas. Aware of the risk of the conflict flaring up, he called on Iran, the main supporter of Hamas, as well as of Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, to “not take the risk of opening new fronts”.
Does this mean that tomorrow we will see the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle sailing along the coast of Gaza or the sending of French special forces to Palestine? No. The presidential idea is in the “draft” state, people in the presidential entourage emphasize, and Israel has not, for the moment, requested military aid from France.
Emmanuel Macron’s proposal is likely to be poorly received by the Arab-Muslim populations of the Middle East and Europe. For the latter, Hamas remains a nationalist movement and not an internationalist one. For them, Hamas won (in 2006) the only democratic elections ever organized in Palestine, but the West refused to endorse this democratic result and to discuss with it. For them again, the terrorist savagery of Hamas is the result of the confinement of the territory of Gaza for more than ten years. Finally, for them, the indiscriminate bombings of Gaza City by Israeli aircraft are war crimes which are no less serious than those committed by Hamas.
The political leaders of Hamas, residing in Turkey or Qatar, expected from France a less hostile attitude, or even a possible mediator posture. It is as if these political leaders did not perceive the seriousness of the barbaric crimes committed against civilians by the combatants of their military branch. In 2008, France included Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations, thus depriving itself of the only possible interlocutor in Gaza. Today, after the horrors of October 7, there is no going back.
Emmanuel Macron said it clearly: France only recognizes the Palestinian Authority chaired by Mahmoud Abbas, 88, as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This is why the French president traveled late Tuesday afternoon to Ramallah, in the West Bank, to speak with the old leader, who has been fairly demonetized among Palestinian youth. After his proposal for an “anti-Daesh coalition”, the French president was welcomed by a protest parade in the Palestinian “capital”.
The second part of Macronian diplomacy is to prevent the conflict from spreading to the entire region. The president therefore preached moderation to his Israeli interlocutors in their responses to the sporadic shootings coming from southern Lebanon, controlled by Shiite Hezbollah.
Finally, the third part of presidential diplomacy is to relaunch the idea that we must once and for all resolve the Palestinian problem by giving this people a state capable of living in peace alongside Israel. This is what the government of Yitzhak Rabin began to do after the Oslo Accords of 1993. A process that Netanyahu, then leader of the opposition, had fought with all his strength, to the point of accusing Rabin of being a traitor. Macron spoke at length at the Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem with Yair Lapid, the only significant Israeli politician to support the need for a Palestinian state.
Also read “We hadn’t seen such images since the Nazi regime”: the atrocious testimony of forensic teams in Israel
Emmanuel Macron raised these themes in all the interviews he had on Tuesday in Jerusalem with Israeli leaders, including General Gantz, member of the war cabinet. Alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog, he also stressed that “the first goal we should have today is the release of all hostages, without any distinction.”
Since Israel’s war of independence in 1948, France has always been concerned about the security of this state. It transferred its nuclear secrets to him and delivered its missiles, AMX tanks and Mirage III fighter jets. In his famous press conference of November 1967, General de Gaulle, although critical of the Israeli military installation on the territories taken during the June 1967 war against the Arabs, reaffirmed that France would not tolerate anyone touching the security of the Jewish state. Emmanuel Macron is part of this story, but his coalition proposal risks complicating his mission with Israel’s Arab neighbors.
