Published in the Jerusalem Post, 15 September 2025
For decades French leaders have tried to position France as a prime mover in solving the Israel-Palestinian issue. Time and again they have attempted to convene multilateral conferences to resolve the question, but despite typically gaining Arab and European support, their initiatives have invariably proved ineffective.
Ever resilient, France’s President
Emmanuel Macron is about to have another try.
A high-level meeting between
France and several Arab states is scheduled for September 22 in New York, just
before the UN General Assembly opens. This meeting will be co-led by French
President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Its
primary aim will be to solidify international support for a two-state solution
to the Israel-Palestinian issue. The conference is timed to coincide with
France’s intended recognition of Palestinian statehood.
The meeting will also aim to
secure concessions from the Palestinian side for peace, including a permanent
ceasefire, the disarmament of Hamas, the reform of the Palestinian Authority
(PA) and the deployment of a stabilization force in the Strip.
French presidents have aspired to
be power brokers in the Middle East ever since France assumed its colonial role
there, after the First World War. Following Israel’s independence in
1948, France emerged as one of its strongest allies in Europe. The close
military and political ties binding the two countries culminated in joint
operations during the 1956 Suez crisis against Egypt.
Following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, however, France’s then-president, Charles de Gaulle, dramatically changed policy. He condemned Israel as the aggressor, imposed an arms embargo, and reoriented French diplomacy toward the Arab world.
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De Gaulle sought influence in the
Middle East by trying to act as an independent power broker, balancing the US
and the USSR. In pursuit of this strategy France became a leading
European advocate of a pro-Arab – and later pro-Palestinian – stance.
In 1980 France was central in an
early European bid to shape a comprehensive peace process – the Venice
Declaration, which pushed for Palestinian self-determination.
It is certainly true that while long advocating the creation of a Palestinian state, France has consistently defended Israel’s right to exist in security – though belying the famed logicality of French thought, the possible incompatibility between these two positions has never been acknowledged.
France’s view of itself as a possible facilitator of an Israel-Palestinian accord has led it into a blind alley on more than one occasion. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was the initiator of a débacle par excellence in 2007-8, when he devised and pushed through the European Union a concept grandiosely titled the “Union for the Mediterranean”.
A year later, in August
2009, when it was clear that newly-elected US President Barack Obama was eager
to relaunch peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Sarkozy believed
he saw an opportunity to get in on the act and offered to host another
international conference in order, as he said, to facilitate the peace
process. He went so far as to issue invitations to the PA president and
leaders from concerned countries, including Israel, Egypt, Lebanon and
Syria. Obama, however, intent on pursuing his own initiative, rejected
the overture.
Nothing daunted, in January 2010
as Obama’s efforts to bring the parties to the negotiating table were inching
their painful way forward, Sarkozy repeated his offer. He declared that
the resumption of Israel-Palestinian discussions was a French priority, and
that a Paris-located international conference would be a positive way to
advance the peace process.
Once again France’s attempt to
elbow its way into the negotiations was quietly pushed aside.
This nostrum of a Paris-based international conference seems to have become an idée fixe in French thinking. It reappeared in December 2014, when President François Hollande took the lead in drafting a Security Council resolution outlining proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian final-status deal.
Laurent Fabius, France’s then
foreign minister, played the same tune, with minor variations, when he visited
the Middle East in June 2015 to sell the idea of a French-led initiative to
reboot the peace process.
And then, finally, on June 3,
2016 Hollande achieved France’s long-held ambition of hosting an international
peace conference, and in Paris too. Attended by representatives of
28 governments and international organizations, though not Israel or the
Palestinian Authority, its purpose was to launch a major French peace
initiative. It led to a genuine international peace
conference, held of course in Paris, on January 15, 2017 attended
by representatives from about 70 countries , including then-US Secretary
of State, John Kerry.
The final communiqué reaffirmed
support for a two-state solution and condemned settlement expansion. The
occasion was, however, rather like a performance of Hamlet without either the
prince or his father’s ghost. France invited neither Israel’s prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nor PA president Mahmoud Abbas.
The intention had been to impose
global pressure on both to re-enter negotiations on the basis of the recent UN
resolution 2334 and the vitally important earlier resolution 242. Ignored
or unrecognized by those present was the glaring incompatibility between the
two. While 242 envisaged the creation of new “secure and recognized boundaries”
in the West Bank and Jerusalem, 2334 handed the whole territory over to the
Palestinians.
The main positive point
emerging from the conference was that “interested participants” resolved to
meet again before the end of 2017 to advance the two-state solution. That
meeting never took place, and the whole initiative fizzled out.
The French have a saying: Plus ça
change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they are
the same). Here we are in 2025 with France’s current president organizing
a broadly based international conference seeking to rally international
partners around the two-state solution, and positioning France at the forefront
by pledging to recognize the State of Palestine.
The underlying reality, though, remains. Whatever the French leadership may believe, France is not a principal in the perennial Israel-Palestine issue. Its opinion, and therefore its influence, has historically counted for little. That remains as true in 2025 as it always has.
Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Despite Macron's efforts, France's influence on the Middle East counts for little", 15 September 2025:
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