Agencies
Gaza
Hamas has said that the announcement by President Emmanuel Macron that France could recognize a Palestinian state by June was an “important step” after Israel’s foreign minister slammed the plan.
“We welcome the statements made by French President Emmanuel Macron regarding his country’s readiness to recognize the State of Palestine,” Hamas official Mahmud Mardawi told AFP.
He said the announcement was “an important step that, if implemented, would constitute a positive shift in the international position towards the legitimate national rights of our Palestinian people.”
On Wednesday, Macron said France plans to recognize a Palestinian state within months and could make a move at a UN conference in New York in June.
“We need to move towards recognition (of a Palestinian state). And so over the next few months, we will. I’m not doing it to please anyone. I’ll do it because at some point it will be right,” Macron said during an interview on France 5 television.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced Macron’s announcement that Paris could recognise a Palestinian state by June, saying it would be a “prize” for terrorism.
“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,” Saar said on X late on Wednesday.
“These kind of actions will not bring peace, security and stability in our region closer, but the opposite – they only push them further away.”
Nearly 150 countries recognise a Palestinian state.
In May 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced recognition, followed by Slovenia in June, moves partly fuelled by condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza that followed the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
But France would be the most significant European power to recognise a Palestinian state, a move the United States has also long resisted but which proponents see as a necessary step to bringing stability to the region.
