Macron says Israel can’t have ‘free pass’ in Gaza

PARIS – A war of words between France and Israel escalated on May 30 as French President Emmanuel Macron, in an opening speech during a security forum in Singapore, said the West risked “losing all credibility with the rest of the world” if Israel was allowed “a free pass” in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier in the day, during a meeting with reporters, Mr Macron threatened to

“harden the collective position” of the European Union against Israel

“if there is not a response to the humanitarian situation in the next few hours”. How exactly European states would do that was not clear.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry shot back in a statement saying the government was facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid. “The facts do not interest Macron,” it said.

Relations between France and Israel have plunged to their lowest point in years.

Israel has been infuriated by Mr Macron’s apparent plan, alluded to again in Singapore, to recognise a Palestinian state, while France and other European powers, including Britain, have run out of patience with Israel’s sustained assault in Gaza.

Mr Macron’s statements, after a series of recent French warnings seen as provocations in Jerusalem, ignited the fury of Israel, which accused Mr Macron of leading “a crusade against the Jewish state” and wanting to reward terrorists “with a Palestinian state. No doubt, its national day will be Oct 7”.

It was on Oct 7, 2023, that Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 people hostage in the deadliest day in the country’s 77-year history.

Israel responded with a devastating assault in Gaza that has left almost 56,000 Palestinians dead. It has also imposed a two-month blockade that was partially eased last week.

“There is no humanitarian blockade; that is a blatant lie,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement that defended its efforts to allow some aid into Gaza, where there are severe shortages of food and medicine. The ministry attacked Mr Macron for pressuring Israel, not Hamas.

Mr Macron said in his speech there could not be “double standards” when it came to the war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, suggesting that the EU could not condemn Moscow for its aggression against Kyiv while remaining silent on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

The backdrop to the rising tension is a UN conference in June, to be chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, to explore a peace settlement leading to a two-state outcome. Mr Macron has said he will attend and has suggested that France may recognise a Palestinian state, although he has not committed to doing so.

Addressing the press in Singapore, he said “the creation of a Palestinian state” was “not simply a moral obligation, but a political requirement”.

He listed six conditions for establishing a Palestinian state: the liberation of the remaining hostages held by Hamas; the demilitarisation of Hamas; the exclusion of Hamas from the governance of any Palestinian state; reforming the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank; the eventual Palestinian state’s recognition of Israel and its right to live in security; and the creation of an unspecified “security architecture” for the entire region.

During a visit to the West Bank on May 30, Mr Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, dismissed Mr Macron’s ideas. “They’ll recognise a Palestinian state on paper, and we will build here on the ground the Jewish state of Israel,” he said. “The paper will be tossed in the garbage, and the state of Israel will prosper and flower.”

Mr Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, said on social media: “Macron plays into the hands of Islamic terrorism.” He added: “Islamic terrorism will explode in the faces of all French citizens.”

Tensions have flared periodically between Mr Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The French President has tried to calibrate his approach to the conflict in a way that does not inflame domestic tensions in a country with the largest Muslim and Jewish populations in Western Europe.

In 2024, Mr Netanyahu, incensed by Mr Macron’s lessons on the birth of Israel, reminded him that Israel came into being in 1948 through “the victory achieved in the War of Independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors – including from the Vichy regime in France”.

The Vichy regime, which governed a rump France from 1940 to 1944, collaborated with Nazi Germany to deport 76,000 Jews from France to their deaths in Adolf Hitler’s camps.

It is not clear what role, if any, the US will play in the UN conference in June. France has been pointed in trying to distinguish the broader peace initiative from previous efforts led by Washington. But for Israel, the US is the only voice that matters.

The Trump administration appears to be on a distinct diplomatic path. This week, it presented Israel and Hamas with its own plan to pause the war in Gaza. An earlier proposal called for a 60-day ceasefire, during which Hamas would release about 10 living hostages and half of the remaining bodies in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons, according to people briefed on the negotiations. NYTIMES