Palestinians fleeing the fighting in Gaza City head south along the coastal road west of Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, on September 18. French President Emmanuel Macron has rallied 142 nations behind a road map for a two-state solution after the Gaza war ends. Missing from the list: Israel and the United States. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
French President Emmanuel Macron says he will formally recognise a Palestinian state as the United Nations General Assembly convenes this week, part of a broad diplomatic push he has spearheaded in an attempt to salvage a two-state solution with Israel that looks as distant as ever.
The plan, hatched with the Saudis over the past six months, is meant to provide a road map for rebuilding the Gaza Strip and securing a peace after the end of the war there, which is close to entering its third year. It has gained support from 142 countries.
Since Macron announced in July that he would recognise Palestine, more than half a dozen countries have followed suit, including Canada and Britain, whose Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, was expected to make his pronouncement today.
The rest are expected to make their declarations tomorrow during a summit at the UN the day before the General Assembly officially opens.
Even the plan’s staunchest backers in Macron’s inner circle concede that it misses the essential element: any hint of backing by Israel or the United States.
That has made the effort by Macron seem destined to join more than 75 years of failed diplomacy since the UN in 1947 first called for the creation of an Arab state alongside a Jewish state.
Nonetheless, Macron and his diplomatic team insist that the diplomacy is worth the effort, even if others consider it quixotic, however well intended.
“The ingredients required to test the possibility of a two-state solution are simply not there,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“I have no objection to the substantive elements of what the Saudis and French are prepared to do,” added Miller, who was formerly an adviser to US secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations. “But it’s wholly untethered from the current reality.”
That reality includes a ground assault by Israeli forces on central Gaza City this past week that has displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians; a recent declaration by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “there will be no Palestinian state”; and wholesale condemnation from the Trump Administration, which has worked behind the scenes to pressure allies not to sign on to the plan.
This past week, while visiting Jerusalem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed any move to recognise a Palestine state as symbolic and said it would only make Hamas “feel more emboldened”.
He warned that a fresh push for Palestinian statehood could provoke an Israeli backlash — a likely reference to recent calls by right-wing Israeli ministers for the annexation of the West Bank in response.
Macron and his team see the pushback as a sign that both Israel and the US are feeling the growing pressure of international isolation.
From the beginning, Macron has said that only a strong political commitment to Palestinian statehood could open the way to a two-state peace, persuade Hamas to lay down its arms, and eventually advance the region toward stability.
His recognition of a Palestinian state is intimately tied to a 42-point “day after” plan developed with the Saudis, which sets out “tangible, time-bound and irreversible steps” toward a two-state solution once a ceasefire is declared.
The plan, also known as the “New York Declaration”, was approved by 142 countries at the General Assembly this month.
Its practical steps include the establishment of a “transitional administrative committee” to oversee governance, and the creation of a stabilisation force under the aegis of the UN to provide security. Details on which countries would offer up troops remain to be hammered out, French diplomats said.
It condemns the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas as well as the forced displacement of Palestinians, and it calls for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages by Hamas. It also demands that Hamas “must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons”.
Given that the document was signed by many Arab and Middle Eastern countries, including traditional allies of Hamas, Macron’s team considers the agreement a breakthrough.
Much like the plan Macron has spearheaded with a “coalition of the willing” for securing a prospective peace in Ukraine, the day-after plan for Gaza depends on the participation of the US. And it requires buy-in from a recalcitrant Israeli Government and from Hamas, which so far has refused to disarm.
It was conceived with the understanding that only the US has leverage to stop the war, given Israel’s dependence on US arms, said Rym Momtaz, editor-in-chief of the Strategic Europe blog run by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“France and Saudi Arabia are providing the most constructive concrete assist they can to enable President [Donald] Trump to achieve the peace he promised, and also regional normalisation,” said Momtaz, an expert on French foreign policy.
Though she believed the plan’s realism was its strength, she also sees it as its “biggest weakness, because America isn’t playing ball”.
Miller said the French and Saudis are “not reading Trump correctly”.
“The missing ingredient is Trump’s capacity, will, and desire to essentially take on Benjamin Netanyahu,” he said.
“I’ve seen nothing in the past nine months to indicate to me that when it comes to Gaza and Hamas, Trump is prepared to press Israel.”
For decades, support for a two-state solution has been official US policy. Successive US governments also believed that Palestinian statehood should be realised after full peace negotiations settled between Israel and the Palestinians, not through unilateral declarations or UN resolutions.
Last year, the US blocked the UN Security Council from moving forward on a Palestinian bid to be recognised as a full member state at the UN.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, then US ambassador to the United Nations, explained that “Palestinians don’t have control over a significant portion of what is supposed to be their state. It’s being controlled by a terrorist organisation,” she said, referring to Hamas.
The UN has continually supported the idea of a Palestinian state, and the idea has underpinned peace negotiations over decades.
The Oslo Accords, signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993, laid out a timeline for Palestinian self-determination, which was dashed by violence and mistrust.
In 2006, Hamas, which does not recognise Israel’s right to exist, won the Palestinian legislative elections, then seized control of Gaza. Years later came the October 7 attack, when Hamas fighters killed some 1200 people in Israel and took 250 people hostage.
Since then, Israel’s war on Hamas has led to widespread destruction, hunger and the death of about 65,000 people in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Recognising a Palestinian state before the conclusion of a peace process inverts the traditional pattern, said Max Rodenbeck, Israel-Palestine project director for the International Crisis Group in London.
“The trouble is on the ground; the actual state people are talking about is shrinking by the minute,” he said.
“Since October 7 on the West Bank alone, the amount of new territory taken by Israeli settlers is about three times the size of Gaza.”
More than 140 countries have recognised a Palestinian state, including Spain, Ireland, and Norway, which did so last year.
What makes France different, perhaps, is its emotional and historical bond to Israel, as well as its diplomatic stature.
France is home to the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Western Europe, and it is the only nuclear power and only permanent member of the Security Council in the European Union.
The symbolism of France’s recognising Palestine was important to the Arab states, offering Macron some leverage to get commitments from them, Momtaz said.
Those included public pronouncements by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who called on Hamas, its bitter rival, to “hand over its weapons”, immediately free all hostages and leave Gaza.
The Palestinian leader vowed to hold elections in 2026 and to reform the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank.
He also promised to strip the Palestinian education curriculum of hate speech and incitement, something that addresses a key concern for many Israelis, according to Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst and public opinion expert who has worked on peace campaigns in Israel for many decades.
She called the plan “valuable” and said some of its points could be “advanced by individual member states or maybe they can contribute to changing bilateral relations, and yes, they can be a signpost for where to go”.
After his pronouncement, Macron has scheduled meetings with partners at the UN to continue working on the plan. Among his team, there is hope that pressure from Arab countries might push Trump to act.
The plan’s backers understand that is a long shot.
“It’s a gesture of despair,” said Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to Israel, the US and the UN.
“We are heading toward a disaster. We are trying to stop it.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Catherine Porter
Photographs by: Saher Alghorra, Avishag Shaar-Yashuv
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