Analysis
Macron
plan to recognise Palestine puts pressure on Starmer to choose a course
Julian
Borger
Prime
minister risks either provoking mutiny in his cabinet and party over Gaza or
alienating White House
Fri 25 Jul
2025 18.33 BST
France’s
decision to recognise Palestine at the next UN general assembly is an attempt
to build momentum for change and make a break from the major western powers’
impassivity in the face of Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
Emmanuel
Macron’s declaration, announced in typically dramatic fashion on social media
late on Thursday night, draws a line between the paths followed by the US and
France over the Gaza war, and significantly raises the pressure on the UK,
Germany and other G7 powers to pick a side.
Macron, Keir
Starmer and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, held what the UK prime
minister described as an “emergency call” on Friday, to coordinate positions.
It led to a joint call for Israel to lift its food blockade immediately, an
immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas. But there was no
apparent shift in Merz’s or Starmer’s position on recognition.
The German
government said it had “no plans to recognise a Palestinian state in the short
term”. Starmer stuck to his position that statehood would only come as part of
a sequence of coordinated steps towards peace.
“Recognition
of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps. I am unequivocal about
that,” he said. “But it must be part of a wider plan which ultimately results
in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis.”
The French
argument is that in the absence of any sign of moves towards stopping the war,
European governments have to try to break the deadlock with the levers they
have to hand.
“It
obviously puts huge pressure on the UK to act likewise,” said Victor Kattan, an
assistant professor of public international law at Nottingham University.
“France and the UK are very close allies, and they’ve obviously spoken about
this when Macron visited the UK a few weeks back.”
The
continuing shift in western European positions has come at a time when UN
officials and increasing numbers of legal experts are accusing Israel of
committing genocide in Gaza.
The
international court of justice in The Hague is currently weighing up a genocide
charge against Israel, brought by South Africa in December 2023.
France’s
stated intention of recognising Palestine, joining approximately 147 other UN
member states, is clearly a reaction to the catastrophic situation in Gaza,
with deaths from hunger from Israel’s blockade multiplying alongside the
relentless toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombing and gunfire.
Macron’s
declaration, however, would do nothing immediate to stop the killing, argued
Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for
Contemporary Arab Studies.
“I think
this is a mostly symbolic gesture that will annoy the Israelis but ultimately
will not change anything on the ground, least of all in Gaza. It does nothing
to bring about a ceasefire or to address the catastrophic mass starvation in
Gaza, which is not only man-made but engineered as a matter of Israeli policy,
or the systematic destruction of Gaza,” Elgindy said.
He said the
only meaningful actions for western countries in the face of Israeli war crimes
was to impose trade sanctions and arms embargos. France, like other western
states, has not stopped arms supplies to Israel, despite expressions of outrage
at Israeli actions.
Husam
Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, argued that to look for immediate
results from state recognition was to miss the point.
“This is
really the wrong question, and it has led us to where we are today: genocide,
mass killing, mass starvation, mass destruction, and the further erosion of the
very idea of a two-state solution,” Zomlot said. “Issues of recognition of a
people’s legitimate self-determination is an inalienable right.”
He said no
real progress could be made towards ending the conflict until Palestinian
statehood was recognised. “The key message is that the recognition has got to
be without ifs and buts and it has got to be immediate and it has got to
kickstart a political process that has the potential of ending all this mess we
are in,” Zomlot said, adding: “If not now, when?”
Macron’s
announcement comes in the run-up to a two-day conference on Monday at the UN in
New York, hosted by France and Saudi Arabia, delayed by the Israel-Iran war,
which is supposed to start work on a blueprint for peace through the
establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
That will be
followed by a summit on the issue at the UN general assembly high-level meeting
in September, where Macron will formally recognise Palestine. The French hope
is he will not be alone, and that other G7 powers will have followed suit by
then, building momentum.
Between then
and now, the political pressure on Starmer will be intense, with a brewing
mutiny on the issue in the Labour party and in the cabinet.
The House of
Commons foreign affairs committee published a report on Friday arguing the UK
“should now recognise the state of Palestine while there is still a state to
recognise”. “An inalienable right should not be made conditional. The
government cannot continue to wait for the perfect time because experience
shows that there will never be a perfect time, and in hindsight it is possible
to see times when it should have occurred.”
Gershon
Baskin, a former Israeli government adviser and peace activist, argued that the
major western powers’ failure to recognise Palestine had contributed to the
failure to make progress towards a two-state solution, and was a reflection of
the lack of real political will around the world to create the right conditions
for peace.
“How many
years can you talk about a two-state solution and only recognise one of them?”
said Baskin. “There’s a need to break out of this duplicity of intentions and
actions, so the French making that step is good. It needs to be done along with
other G7 members, and members of the European Union that haven’t yet done it.
It’s important because it makes a statement – that the world is committed to a
solution to this conflict.”
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