TOPSHOT - Palestinians survey the damage following the Israeli military bombardment of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) run Abu Araban school, turned shelter, where internally displaced Palestinians are living, in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip on July 14, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
PARIS (AFP) - France plans to recognise a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview broadcast Wednesday.
"We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months," Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television.
"Our aim is to chair this conference with Saudi Arabia in June, where we could finalise this movement of mutual recognition by several parties," he added.
"I will do it because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognise Israel in turn, which many of them do not do," he added.
Such recognition would allow France "to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel's right to exist -- which is the case with Iran -- and to commit ourselves to collective security in the region," he added.
France has long championed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including after the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and risk antagonising Israel, which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.
France's recognition of Palestinian statehood "would be a step in the right direction in line with safeguarding the rights of the Palestinian people and the two-state solution," Palestinian minister of state for foreign affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shahin told AFP.
Nearly 150 countries recognise a Palestinian state. In May 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced recognition, followed by Slovenia in June, in moves partly fuelled by condemnation of Israel's bombing of Gaza that followed the October 7 attacks.
But France would be the most significant European power to recognise a Palestinian state, a move the United States has also long resisted.
In Egypt, Macron held summit talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah II and also made clear he was strongly opposed to any displacement or annexation in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
US President Donald Trump has suggested turning Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East" with the Palestinians moving elsewhere -- a suggestion that has sparked bitter condemnation.
Macron responded that the Gaza Strip was "not a real estate project."
"Simplistic thinking sometimes doesn't help," he added, and, in a message to Trump said: "Perhaps it would be wonderful if one day it developed in an extraordinary way, but our responsibility is to save lives, restore peace, and negotiate a political framework."
"If all this doesn't exist, no one will invest. Today, no one will invest a cent in Gaza," he said.
