Two states – Macron’s final effort

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 19 May 2026

France has announced that it will host an international meeting in Paris on June 12, 2026, dedicated to realizing the two‑state solution.  With barely a year left in office, French president Emmanuel Macron is making a final bid to become the power broker who secures a sovereign state for the Palestinian people.  

This will be Macron’s second attempt at seizing the initiative in the Israel-Palestinian dispute.  

On July 28–30, 2025 in New York Macron co‑chaired a UN conference on implementing the two‑state solution.  It was resumed during the UN General Assembly’s high‑level week in late September 2025, and it was there that Macron announced France’s recognition of a State of Palestine.

Macron is following a well-trodden path.  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. Their initiatives have invariably proved ineffective.

French presidents have aspired to lead the game in the Middle East ever since France assumed its colonial role there, after the First World War.  At first, 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 against Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis.

Following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, though, 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.

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.  

 A certain inconsistency is also apparent in the planned June event in Paris.  In a televised address on March 3, Macron emphasized that Middle East peace “can only be achieved through diplomatic talks,” yet this forthcoming meeting is framed as a gathering featuring charitable and humanitarian bodies and networks. 

The opening move, reported by France’s Le Monde on April 30, was a video message from the French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, played to a gathering of several hundred peace activists in Tel Aviv – the "People's Peace Summit".   It had been organized by "It's Time", a grouping of ​some 80​ Israeli peace​ and civil society organizations working to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict through a two-state political agreement.                           

"Your presence here,” said Barrot, “is an act of resistance against fatalism and resignation."

​  His choice of audience indicates that the French intend to draw heavily on established Israeli and Palestinian peace NGOs, dialogue groups, and civil‑society networks for their June gathering.  So far France has not released a list of the bodies invited to attend, nor a formal participants list, but it can be assumed that a core of Israeli and Palestinian civil‑society organizations have indicated their willingness to engage.

​  As for the agenda, based on official statements the meeting is explicitly “dedicated to the long‑touted two‑state solution,” tying France’s recognition of Palestine to a structured set of discussions on how to realize that vision politically and practically.  The design is for “Israeli and Palestinian civil societies” to make their voices heard.  So the meeting will not, apparently, be a direct one-track negotiation, but rather panels and working groups highlighting joint initiatives, confidence‑building projects and peace education.

 France’s view of itself as a possible facilitator of an Israel-Palestinian accord has led it into ​less than productive actions on more than one occasion.​ ​ In July 2008 former French President Nicolas Sarkozy induced more than 40 heads of state, including Israel’s then-prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, to attend a summit in Paris.  There he pushed through a concept grandiosely titled the “Union for the Mediterranean”.  ​It initiated some​ useful​ practical developments in its early years, but ​it attracts little public attention nowadays, ​and it is far from flourishing. ​ In 2024 its secretary-general stated that "the sole viable vision for the region" was the two-state solution. 

 In 2009 ​Sarkozy offered to host another international conference in order, as he said, to facilitate the peace process.  ​Newly elected US President Obama, however, intent on pursuing his own initiative, rejected the overture.​  Nothing daunted, Sarkozy tried again in January 2010 and was again rebuffed.

This nostrum of a Paris-based international conference seems to have become an idée fixe in French thinking.  It reappeared in December 2014, when then-President François Hollande took the lead in drafting a Security Council resolution outlining proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian final-status deal, initiated – of course – by an international peace conference to take place in Paris.

That came to nothing, but on January 15, 2017 Hollande actually achieved France’s long-held ambition.

He hosted an international peace conference in Paris attended by representatives from about 70 countries including then-US Secretary of State, John Kerry. Nothing of substance resulted.  The final communiqué reaffirmed support for a two-state solution, but the occasion was rather like a performance of Hamlet without either the prince or his father’s ghost.  Neither Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nor PA president Mahmoud Abbas, had been invited.

The French have a saying: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they're the same).  Here we are in 2026 with France’s current president organizing a broadly based  conference seeking to rally international partners around the two-state solution.

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 2026 as it always was.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "France’s latest bid to broker Israel-Palestinian peace not likely to work," 19 May 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-896508

Israel and the UAE – brothers-in-arms

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 12 May 2026

  On May 4 Iran fired 12 ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles, and four drones into the United Arab Emirates. This latest attack came in response to President Donald Trump’s effort to ensure free navigation for commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

            Initially kept secret, and later disclosed only through limited specialist reporting, is the interesting information that IDF personnel operated Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system to intercept the incoming Iranian missiles, but from within the UAE.  Not much has been made of it in the media, but this was the first time that Israel’s advanced technology has been deployed and used operationally in combat on foreign soil.

It proves, if proof were needed, that Israel–UAE military cooperation is a rapidly maturing strategic partnership.  Embedded in the Abraham Accords framework, the collaboration is driven above all by a shared perception of the threat posed by Iran. 

Early in the war, at the request of UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed in a direct conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel quietly deployed an Iron Dome battery plus IDF personnel to the UAE.  Reports indicate that Israeli crews have since intercepted dozens of Iranian missiles and drones aimed at UAE targets.

   In parallel, the IAF carried out strikes on short‑range missile launch sites in Iran that were assessed as threats to the UAE and other Gulf states, linking Israeli offensive operations directly to Emirati defense.  On May 14 the Jerusalem Post reported that Benjamin Netanyahu visited the UAE and met with Zayed while the fighting was going on.  The meeting yielded a “historic breakthrough” according to Netanyahu’s office.

   Yet even before the current Iran war, there was a clear trend of growing military and defense‑industrial cooperation between Israel and the UAE.

It was back in August 2025 that the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published a survey titled: “Israel-UAE Defense Cooperation Grows under the Abraham Accords”. It included reference to a possible forthcoming deal in which the UAE’s Edge Group would procure the Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from the Israeli company Elbit Systems—including transfer of technology and localized production.

That would, it said, potentially​ shift ​"the geopolitical balance in the Gulf.” If this deal was indeed finalized, ​it has not, on the grounds of industrial confidentiality, been made public​. Reports have appeared, though, of multi-million dollar sales of the Hermes UAV to undisclosed customers.   

What is known is that since normalization in 2020, the UAE has acquired Israeli‑made Barak and Spyder air‑defense systems, embedding Israeli technology in its force structure.  In October 2022 an Israeli‑made Barak system was deployed in the UAE, and by 2023 the two states conducted their first bilateral naval exercise and unveiled a jointly developed unmanned surface vessel.

In 2025, UAE Mirage 2000‑9s flew alongside Israeli and US aircraft in a multinational exercise in Greece, signaling that Emirati participation in exercises that openly include Israel has become routine.

Put together with the deployment of an Iron Dome system within the UAE itself, what emerges​, if not quite a mutual defense treaty​, is ​close to the ​collaboration expected in a ​signed and sealed security partnership​.

Way back in 2017, three years before the Abraham Accords, a senior UAE military figure publicly described the UAE and Israel as “like brothers”.  In an interview with the US outlet Defense & Aerospace Report, UAE Major General Abdullah al‑Hashmi went on to describe the US as the “older brother”, overseeing any differences between them.

​So can Israel and the UAE fairly be called “brothers‑in‑arms”?

Israeli and Emirati forces have now fought on the same side in the same live theatre, with Israelis directly defending Emirati territory from Iranian attack and coordinating offensive action against Iranian launch sites.​  The UAE hosts and operates Israeli air‑defense and early‑warning systems and trains regularly with Israeli forces, which is the kind of shoulder‑to‑shoulder activity many would intuitively associate with “brothers‑in‑arms”.

​The cooperation​, though, is framed around the specific threat posed by Iran. There is no formal or explicit public commitment that either state w​ould come to the other’s aid in future conflicts. Above all, the relationship remains constrained by wider Arab public opinion, and the UAE’s need to preserve maneuvering room with other regional actors. ​

​All the same Israel and the UAE have crossed a previously unbridgeable Rubicon.   Israeli troops, Iron Dome, and even – it is reliably reported – state-of-the=-art Israeli prototype Iron Beam and Spectro systems have been deployed in combat from Emirati soil, with real‑time Israeli intelligence guiding UAE and coalition responses.​  All of which makes it politically and operationally easier, next time, to set up joint structures previously almost unimaginable – the permanent basing outside of Israel of some Israeli systems, joint missile‑defense planning, and regularized trilateral planning with US Central Command. 

​In fact that model is already ​beginning to appear, in uneven ways, across the Abraham Accords bloc​.  It could, if the war drags on, become the basis of a looser regional security architecture focused on Iran and its projectiles rather than on broader Arab–Israeli peace.

Among the Abraham Accords states, the UAE and Bahrain are emerging as front‑line adopters of the new model.  They openly normalize with Israel, quietly integrate Israeli air‑ and missile‑defense, intelligence, and naval cooperation, and plug this into US‑led multilateral drills and emerging regional defense schemes aimed squarely at Iran and its projectiles.

By contrast, Morocco ​- and ​Sudan before the civil war - were “selective adopters”​,  taking Israeli UAVs, air‑defense systems, intelligence and doctrine sharing, but applying them primarily to their own local rivalries like Algeria and Western Sahara.

​Introduced in the US Senate in March 2026 ​was  an ​Abraham Accords Defense Cooperation Act​. ​If passed it would create a formal Pentagon‑run “US–Abraham Accords Defense Cooperation Initiative”, deepening military cooperation with Abraham Accords countries specifically to deter Iran and its proxies.​ 

​The Bill is still at the very start of the legislative process, but commentators believe that  current political dynamics in Congress give it a real—though by no means guaranteed—chance of being folded into this year’s annual US defense Bill.  

So ​a possible outcome of this Israel-UAE “brothers-in-arms” moment is a US‑enabled security ecosystem in which Israel and the UAE collaborate closely when Iran is the adversary, and other Accords states plug in more selectively – in short, a tighter, closer, more secure partnership.


Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Israel and UAE: A brothers-in-arms alliance against Iran's growing threat", 12 May 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-895776

Published in Eurasia Review, 15 May 2026:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/15052026-israel-and-the-uae-brothers-in-arms-oped/

Gaza’s future on hold

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 5 May 2026

On April 19 the New York Times, citing two senior Hamas officials, reported that Hamas is prepared to hand over to the Palestinian administrative committee the thousands of automatic rifles and other weapons used by its police and internal security forces in Gaza.  The officials framed this as a significant concession because Hamas, having re-established its authority over roughly half of the Strip, had so far adamantly refused to surrender its weapons. 

The Palestinian administrative committee (formally the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza) is one of the bodies created under the Board of Peace, the high powered controlling group led by US President Donald Trump, set up to oversee the ceasefire arrangements.

What is apparently on offer ​falls well short of the full disarmament and demilitarization specified in the Trump 20-point peace plan for Gaza, which requires Hamas’s military wing​ to be disarmed and disbanded.

The offer conveyed by the Hamas officials presupposes that both the Board of Peace and its Palestinian administrative committee are up and running.  That, however, is nowhere near the present position. While both bodies formally exist on paper and have begun limited activity, neither yet operates as a fully functioning, governing authority in Gaza. The Board of Peace is still consolidating its role and membership, while the Palestinian committee is only partially active.

The Board held a first convening session on February 19, at which members and observers pledged roughly 17 billion dollars in reconstruction funding (10 billion from the US, 7 billion from member states).  At that meeting Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian politician who has been given the title of High Representative for Gaza, said the process of recruiting a new transitional Palestinian police force had begun and "just in the first few hours we have 2,000 people who have applied". 

That hopeful beginning did not lead on to a successful outcome. The plan envisaged a new 5,000-member police force operational in Gaza by late April, but recruitment proceeded at a snail’s pace because of the vetting required to exclude applicants with Hamas connections and past members of the security forces of the Palestinian Authority.  According to the most current assessment, the transitional Palestinian police force is not even close to being deployable.

Mladenov has said the Palestinian police force must be the primary law-and-order agency in Gaza, ​but supported by the International Stabilization Force (ISF), another body under the overall authority of the Board of Peace.  ​Created ​by UN Security Council Resolution 2803​, the ISF is described in the Gaza peace plan as a multinational agency charged with overseeing the disarmament of weaponized groups​ and ​liaising with both Israel and Egypt to ensure the security of Gaza.  ​It is intended to act in conjunction with the newly trained and vetted Palestinian police force.

​What of the Board of Peace?  It exists, and is functioning mainly as a diplomatic and financial coordinating body concerned with organizing pledge conferences, framework decisions and appointments, but it is not yet a fully operative administrative government in Gaza in the conventional sense. It is eventually envisaged as having sweeping legislative and executive authority over Gaza’s transition.

The top​ tier of the Board of Peace is composed of Trump and senior international figures, some named explicitly and others, at the moment, merely invited.  Among the named members are US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, former UK prime minister Tony Blair, and President of the World Bank Ajay Banga.  ​No less than ten heads of state have accepted the invitation to join the Board;  others are still considering.

Immediately beneath the top tier is the operational body known as the Gaza Executive Board.  Some members, like Witkoff, Kushner and Blair, are drawn from the main Board.  A whole range of others including diplomats, ministers and generals come from countries including Turkey, Qatar, Egypt and the Netherlands. It is described as in a “formation” phase.

Beneath the Executive Board is the 15-member Palestinian technocratic committee – one of the basic new bodies envisaged in the Gaza peace plan​. Explicitly described as “apolitical”, it is intended to stand apart from Hamas, Fatah and other factions, and its members are to be “independent technical experts” or “qualified” professionals, not party functionaries. The committee ​was to be the lowest tier of the new Gaza governance structure, tasked with day‑to‑day administration and service restoration. 

It has in fact been formally constituted, and is headed by Dr Ali Sha’ath, a former Palestinian Authority deputy minister.

The committee has issued a mission statement describing itself as ​charged with “restoring ​fundamental services” in Gaza and “rebuild​ing civil institutions,” with priority on security, electricity, water, healthcare, and education. Although ​it has indeed engaged in early administrative and planning work, so far it has had a minimal effect in control​ling Gaza’s territory, security, and political life.

 Not one of these bodies, however, from the Board of Peace down, is yet a fully empowered governing institution in Gaza. In fact there is no single Gazan authority that can say it has both the mandate and the tools – police, budget and bureaucracy – to govern in a comprehensive way.

The failure to disarm Hamas – let alone wrest the governance of nearly half of the Gaza Strip from its hands – inhibits all efforts to restore normality to the daily life of its inhabitants.  The possibility, yet to be tested, that Hamas is prepared to surrender its stock of small arms is encouraging, but the body it is prepared to deal with – the Palestinian administrative committee – is not yet fully functional.  

Has Gaza a hopeful future under the terms of Trump’s peace plan?

Confidence in a post-Hamas structure needs to be earned.  Mistrust in the imposed conditions of the peace plan could be allayed by providing greater transparency about the governance architecture, perhaps by inviting ​some appropriate Palestinian​s ​onto the Board of Peace.  Perhaps Gaza’s governance could eventually be linked to a wider national framework and future elections.  The partially operative institutions that already exist could play a constructive transitional role.

Gaza’s future may be on hold, but despite disruptive efforts like the Global Sumud Flotilla, happily scotched, the green shoots of hope have started to sprout.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Gaza peace plan faces delays as Hamas only signals partial disarmament", 5 May 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-895060 

Published in Eurasia Review, 8 May 2026:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/08052026-gazas-future-on-hold-oped/