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.
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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.
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.
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"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.
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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.
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.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-896508
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