Will Macron's Gambit Break The Dam?

Will Macron's Gambit Break The Dam?
On Dec 13th 1988, PLO Chairman Arafat addressed the UN General assembly on the issue of a two-state solution, after having issued the Palestinian declaration of independence and the establishment of the State of Palestine.
The following piece was, for the most part, written prior to the original intended date of the French and Saudi led two-state conference at the United Nations, it has been minimally updated and re-uploaded to reflect the confirmation by Macron of French recognition, but most of its contents are unchanged due to the underlying conditions having not been upended in a more meaningful manner. A follow-up is to be published after the conference is held.

On November 15th 1988, the former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat issued the Palestinian Declaration of Independence on the last day of the Palestinian National Council's conference in Algeria, taking a unilateral step towards the notion of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital on the pre June 1967 borders. Within the context of the then-ongoing uprising against the Israeli occupation, now known as the First Intifada, it was pivotal for the slow transformation of the PLO into a would-be transitional government that could go on to obtain the recognition of the international community. Despite the relative success of this diplomatic endeavor, with more than 145 out of 193 UN members recognizing the State of Palestine today, the actual establishment of said state is a distant dream to most Palestinians in the year 2025.

As the genocide in Gaza continues with unlimited US support and no end in sight, the international community, which has since October 2023 been largely reduced to passing symbolic resolutions of disapproval and issuing statements of concern, is now perhaps finally contemplating upgrading their response to something a bit more concrete and substantive. In the United Kingdom, fresh sanctions have been issued on individual settlers and settler organizations, and a triumvirate made up of the UK, Canada, and France have threatened "further concrete action" if Israel does not allow unimpeded humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. In Europe more broadly, the EU has been forced by a new Dutch-led initiative into conducting a 1st of its kind review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. In Spain and Ireland, it is now commonplace to hear calls for an arms embargo. In Germany, the typically squeamish government is now vaguely gesturing towards the restriction of arms to Israel under the basis of international humanitarian law.

All of this, however, falls significantly short of the obligations of the international community to prevent genocide and avoid collaborating with the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. In July 2023, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli occupation of east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza was both illegal and that the also illegal settlement enterprise contributed to an overall system of apartheid. The ruling advised that member-states of the United Nations must act to not legitimize the occupation by way of diplomatic or economic cooperation and that Israel must not only militarily withdraw from the occupied State of Palestine, but also withdraw all of its settlers and compensate Palestine for the damages that have been incurred. This of course is a formula that is rooted within the two state framework, around which nearly all United Nations resolutions and conventions are centered.

Despite the fact that the two-state framework since the 1980s has largely served to obfuscate the injustice of the occupation and allow for the entrenchment of settlers in the 1967 territories, the ICJ's ruling last year represented the most significant legal victory yet and has provided the PLO with a newfound diplomatic bedrock for challenging the regime. As Dylan Saba noted in a piece in Foreign Policy last year, the Court has provided even more legal grounding for the marginalization of Israel on the world stage for its intransigence and belligerent occupation.

With that ruling in mind, the United Nations General Assembly opted, with clear majorities in both cases, to pass resolutions in September and December of 2024 outlining how the ICJ's ruling ought to be interpreted and acted upon. The UNGA declared that Israel had 12 months to comply with the ICJ's ruling to withdraw and they ordered for the convening of a high-level United Nations conference to enact the recommendations of the Court and put the two-state solution on track towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The French-Saudi Initiative

On July 28th and 29th, the United Nations is expected to convene a multilateral event called the "High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution". In line with the directions set out by the United Nations General Assembly in resolutions adopted in September and December of last year, the conference's main ambition is to produce an action plan of some kind which would serve as a blueprint for all member states in advancing the two-state framework. While this conference didn't initially invite any serious expectations, President Macron of France surprised his fellow Europeans when he announced in April that France could finally recognize the State of Palestine in June.

"We need to move towards recognition (of a Palestinian state). And so over the next few months, we will. I'm not doing it to please anyone. I'll do it because at some point it will be right," he said during a interview on France 5 television.

After the conference's initial delay, and Macron's failure to secure the commitment of other states after lobbying behind closed doors of fellow European powers such as the United Kingdom and Belgium, as well as Canada, to coordinate recognition, it seems Macron decided to go it alone. On July 24th, France announced that it will recognize the State of Palestine. Malta had previously announced that it intends to upgrade its relationship to Palestine to full bilateral recognition when attending the French-Saudi conference, and it is likely other states will follow.

If Canada and the United Kingdom were to follow Macron's lead and move forward with recognition then they will be the first three G7 countries to do so, and it would leave the US as the only permanent member of the UN Security Council to not have formal relations with Palestine. This "recognition wave" would further underscore the reality that the Palestinian plight remains central to the issue of Middle East peace and would indicate that there are countries which understand this and are attempting to grapple with it in some way, at least symbolically.

In addition to the prospect of a recognition wave, the UN conference is purportedly meant to also differ in its approach to the overall peace process itself. Whereas the Europeans and Arabs have in the past offered up mere suggestions for the Israelis and Palestinians to engage with on a bilateral level, the action document that will be unveiled at the end of the conference will supposedly promote a more defined timeline and binding commitments. Allegedly there will be specifically punitive measures outlined for those who do not comply with the demands put forward by the conference. This takes some cues from the 1991 Madrid Conference, albeit this time around with direct Palestinian participation and a far broader international bench overseeing the eight different working groups set up to flesh out the details. It is yet not clear whether or not the action document will then be adopted by the UNGA, or if it is merely meant to be acted upon by each state as they see fit following the conclusion of the conference.

There have also been reports that the Arab League is expected to issue a first-of-its-kind denunciation of Hamas, and call upon it to disarm. This to me looks like indirect confirmation of an earlier report, first from Bloomberg, that the Saudis were working on a proposal to disarm Hamas in exchange for a guarantee of future political participation— but ultimately the incentive for Hamas to disarm relies upon a concrete guarantee of true statehood. Given the fate of the PLO-led Authority, which gave up armed resistance and received nothing approaching an approximately sovereign state in return, it is doubtful that Hamas will be enticed by a mere promise. At any rate, more will come in the way of details in the coming days. If it is a serious proposal, it will show itself to be one.

The Limitations of An Unclear Political Program

As part of a more serious political program, recognition could really only could be the beginning of a long road towards actualizing the state of Palestine. It'd have to be made explicit that recognition is territorially based upon the integrity of the pre June 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as the capital, and that Israel's role as belligerent occupying power is in contravention of international law and the will of the international community. Like the ICJ ruling last July, diplomatic recognition in the West on this basis would further concretize the consensus that the state of Palestine already exists de jure, and that it merely awaits de facto sovereignty in conjunction with Israel's withdrawal of both its army and settler population.

But mere recognition can not be considered anything more than a symbolic victory on the part of the Palestinian struggle, at best. As of today there are over 750,000 settlers living, illegally, in occupied Palestinian territories. This one-state reality is what has rendered the prospects of a two-state solution virtually incomprehensible to most Palestinians today. The State of Israel has repeatedly insisted that it will continue to embed more of these Jewish settlers onto the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and, if the current far-right government has its way, a depopulated Gaza. The embedding of settlers into an occupied territory is universally considered a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention and the International Criminal Court is reportedly developing its case for the indictment of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir for their promotion of settlement activity as senior members of the Israeli government. Alongside the further erosion of Palestinian land ownership in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, Israel's genocidal onslaught on Gaza and its inhabitants continues virtually unimpeded.

A State Department map shows Palestinian population centers in the West Bank. Obama was surprised to see how “systematic” the Israelis had been at cutting them off from one another. - New Yorker magazine.

It therefore should be clear that the first priority, if one is serious about resolving the issue of Palestinian self-determination, is ending the Israeli genocide on Gaza via a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire. Hamas has indicated that it is ready to accept the establishment of a technocratic committee to govern the Gaza Strip and oversee its reconstruction as part of a broader political initiative to reunite the two Palestinian territories under a single political regime. This, coupled with adoption of the Egyptian reconstruction plan, serves as a genuine blueprint for the gradual restoration of the Gaza Strip as a habitable and prosperous place.

These steps can only be realized through concrete economic measures against the State of Israel for its repeat violations of international humanitarian law. As of the day this was written, the United Kingdom, alongside Norway, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, finally sanctioned the aforementioned Ben-Gvir and Smotrich for their acts of incitement and violence against Palestinians. It is the first time in the history of the State of Israel that a minister of government has been sanctioned by the Europeans or other major Western powers.

This is a welcome step, but it is not sufficient in the face of what has happened over the last 600+ days. These countries, along with the EU more broadly, must initiate a more comprehensive approach when it comes to pressuring Israel. This should include sanctions on the Prime Minister himself, as well as senior members of the Israeli military, but also on settler goods. The European Union's Association Agreement ought to be totally suspended, and a two-way arms embargo must be implemented. Measures announced by the Hague Group are a welcome step, but come too late on the basis of waiting until September to be implemented, and they must be escalated.

If one had to choose between recognition of the State of Palestine or these sorts of measures, it would be a no-brainer to choose the latter over the former. But, this is not the choice on the table. It is possible for all of these countries to both recognize Palestine and implement these measures. Arguably, it is their obligation to do so per the ICJ ruling and UNGA resolutions. The pressure is mounting on them to do so as well, with longtime legacy publications like the Financial Times making that case to their readership alongside respective domestic lobbying in each of these countries

What Would Make The Conference A Success?

It is difficult to, in my personal estimation, stake out what would rightly be considered a success or a failure for this forthcoming French-Saudi initiative.

There is virtually no doubt that if one was to measure the conference's success by whether or not it will produce the independent State of Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem by the end of 2025, this conference would be a failure. It'd be a mistake to do this though, since there are a variety of tangible achievements that can be procured from this multilateral endeavor if the willpower exists among the attendees. If, for example, the French and British were to show off a newfound sense of seriousness by recognizing Palestine and committing to a wide suite of sanctions against Israel, this would represent a significant blow to America and Israel's monopoly on the issue of Palestine. It would, like the sanctions on Ben Gvir and Smotrich, further prove that these countries do not necessarily take cues from DC anymore.

On the other hand, if the conference concludes without concrete economic action or measures against Israel announced, it'd be difficult to conclude that the event was anything more than a public relations stunt for the French and Saudi leadership. If this is the intent, though, these countries alongside the British and Canadians are gearing themselves up to be embarrassed. The pressure to contribute something serious, symbolic or otherwise, has grown significantly since April and it is not likely that a conditions list" for the PLO will be sufficient to stave off further outcry from British MPs or the French Left. Whatever the underlying ambitions of these countries may be, the ground continues to shift and sympathy towards Palestinians grows each day.

With reports of mounting US resistance against this initiative and any concrete actions against Israel's rule over Palestine, it would not be particularly surprising to me if this conference ends up being a dud. And yet, there are hints here and there that the US no longer possesses as much command over the diplomatic atmosphere as it used to. With Trump's extreme erraticism, and his failure to unite with Europe on Ukraine, and on the heels of constantly-escalating public outcry over Gaza, there is an opening for Europe. It's just reliant upon someone brave enough to take it.

Macron's announcement showed that he is willing to go it alone, but it's one thing to go it alone on a mostly symbolic measure and it is another to pressure your peer states into taking comprehensive action. We will see what the results of his efforts are in the coming weeks.