In announcing French recognition of Palestinian statehood, President Emmanuel Macron of France expressed his growing outrage at Palestinian deaths and starvation in Gaza, but also incurred the hostility of the United States, Israel and much of the large French Jewish community.
That is a considerable price to pay for a decision he portrayed as essential to preserve some chance of a two-state peace, but Mr. Macron detests inertia and often acts in isolation. He has lost patience with President Trump’s America and has indicated that he believes he has a moral obligation to confront Israel’s devastation of Gaza.
Certainly, he has placed himself in a delicate position, taking a step that a succession of French presidents had shunned, at a moment when Hamas has not disarmed in Gaza and Palestinian statehood has never seemed more remote.
Mr. Macron’s decision reflects the swelling global horror at the starvation and killing of civilians in Gaza. Australia, Britain and Canada all called on Israel in recent days to allow more aid into the enclave, which may now happen. But French recognition of Palestinian statehood seems unlikely to affect the quest for a cease-fire, let alone inspire serious diplomacy focused on the future of Gaza, as long as the United States has other ideas.
“What he says doesn’t matter,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Macron’s announcement, speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday. “That statement doesn’t carry any weight.”
Nothing in the days preceding Mr. Macron’s announcement late on a summer Thursday evening suggested it was imminent. Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, told France Inter radio on Tuesday that a conference on a two-state peace at the United Nations next week would try to “redraw political perspectives.” Two foreign ministry briefings this week amounted to exercises in evasiveness on the subject of recognition.
Even French officials were in the dark about the timing, said one senior diplomat, who declined to be named in keeping with official practice.
Mr. Macron posted a personal letter to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, on X on Thursday evening that informed him of the French decision. It was hand delivered to Mr. Abbas earlier that day by the French consul general in Jerusalem.
Hamas, Mr. Abbas’ archrival for Palestinian leadership, applauded Mr. Macron for taking a “positive step in the right direction” and called on other European nations to follow suit, even as Mr. Barrot insisted that the French decision isolated “this terrorist movement” by embracing peace over war.
The Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions denounced a “moral transgression, a diplomatic error and a political danger” at a time when Hamas still holds Israeli hostages in Gaza. The group, which goes by the French acronym CRIF, represents a Jewish community of some 500,000, the largest in Western Europe.
“Images of starving Gaza children, at a moment when the United States will not pressure Israel, seems to have produced a feeling in Macron that this was no longer possible,” said Gilles Kepel, a political scientist and leading French expert on the Middle East. “He believes this is the only way to stop the killing.”
Just how remains unclear. Israel looks to the United States for its security, not to Europe. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has backing for his policies from Mr. Trump. One or two other Group of 7 major industrialized countries may follow the French example, increasing pressure on Israel, but so far none has taken that step.
Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, issued a statement Thursday evening, condemning “unspeakable and indefensible” suffering in Gaza, and saying the Palestinian people have an “inalienable right” to a state of their own.
He stopped short of recognizing Palestinian statehood, despite growing pressure and a recommendation that he do so “immediately” from the parliamentary foreign affairs committee. He indicated that, at the very least, a cease-fire was needed first.
France in the past had suggested that it would not act alone, that it sought a simultaneous normalization of relations with Israel by Arab states including Saudi Arabia, and that it would prefer to move to recognition once Hamas had laid down its arms and released all hostages.
But Mr. Macron clearly felt he had to act. That is always his inclination. He appears to believe that there is no other way to face down an intensifying Israeli attempt to drive out desperate Palestinians from the rubble of Gaza and stop the killing.
By recognizing Palestinian statehood, he has registered his protest and hopes to build diplomatic momentum behind a two-state outcome, but he has also opened himself to charges that he has rewarded the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel less than two years after it occurred.
Charles Kushner, the newly arrived U.S. ambassador to France, promptly dispensed with diplomatic protocol to express outrage on X, calling Mr. Macron’s decision “a gift to Hamas and a blow to peace.”
Addressing Mr. Macron personally, he said, “I hope to change your mind before September,” when the French president has said he will make a formal announcement of the decision at the United Nations General Assembly.
Mike Huckabee, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Israel, noted that France had not stated where the “Palestinian” state it will recognize would take form. “I can now exclusively disclose that France will offer the French Riviera & the new nation will be called ‘Franc-en-Stine,’” the ambassador wrote on X.
The statements by the two American ambassadors were further evidence, if any were needed, that old notions of diplomacy and alliances have evaporated since Mr. Trump took office. The background to Mr. Macron’s decision is a frayed French relationship with Mr. Trump and a broader European uncertainty as to whether the United States is now its ally or adversary. Europe lives in a state of deep strategic unease over the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Mr. Macron was deeply affected when he met with injured Palestinian survivors from Gaza during a visit to Egypt in April, and he first spoke of possible recognition of a Palestinian state on the flight back from there. Since then, it seems, his indignation has only grown.
Mr. Barrot, the foreign minister, said this week that “there is no longer any justification for the Israeli army’s military operations in Gaza. This offensive will only exacerbate an already catastrophic situation and cause further forced displacement of populations, which we condemn in the strongest terms.”
Those “strongest terms” found expression in Mr. Macron’s decision. It amounts to a grave step for France. The Vichy regime, which led a rump France under Nazi occupation, deported 76,000 Jews to their deaths. This unhappy history has undergirded a fundamental French attachment to Israel.
That attachment has, however, long been combined with a French quest for a two-state peace, the very outcome that Mr. Netanyahu’s unremitting onslaught in Gaza is intended to bury once and for all.
Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist.
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