France's historical decision to recognise the state of Palestine at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly in September immediately triggered a series of questions from my former colleagues — is France changing its foreign policy towards Palestine and Israel?
In fact, recognising the state of Palestine is perfectly in line with France's foreign policy, it is the rest that isn't.
In 1989, French president François Mitterrand hosted Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), although the latter was considered by some to be a terrorist organisation.
Was Mitterrand a fool to host Arafat?
On the contrary — it brought hope to the region. The Palestinian leader had just declared that he recognised the state of Israel in the 1967 lines as per UN resolutions — an immense concession for peace.
Meanwhile, Israel has never recognised the State of Palestine as we stand under Netanyahu's sixth government.
Now, by finally recognizing the state of Palestine, France sends a strong message that international law still matters in 2025 — in contrast to the ways Israel has been breaking it, including with today's mass starvation of the people of Gaza.
Among the permanent members of the UN Security Council, France is the only western country to do so, a clear signal for the UK, Germany and other western powers to also stick to their commitment to support a two-state solution.
France may be the 148th UN member state to do so, but its recognition bears more weight than usual. France was one of the two European empires colonising most of the Arab world just a few decades ago.
It fought hard to keep Algeria under its rule to then pull out with a million European settlers in disbelief. France promised Israel the nuclear bomb in exchange for Israel's reluctant participation in the 1956 Suez war against Egypt — and kept its word.
Today, the ruling far-right coalition in Israel takes pride in wiping out the entire Palestinian population of Gaza, with some members of the Knesset even boasting that the world does not seem to care if 100 Palestinians are killed overnight.
This September, when France officially recognises the state of Palestine in front of the UNGA, they will be proven wrong.
However France still has a lot more to do, alongside its EU partners : there is a genocide happening now.
As an easy starter, it must stop criminalising peaceful calls to boycott, divest and sanction products from illegal Israeli settlements, in line with its embarrassing condemnation by the European Court of Human Rights, which rejected France's claim that those calls were indirectly antisemitic and urged France to respect the right to freedom of expression.
Second, products imported from illegal Israeli settlements are still not banned from entering the EU, unlike products from Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimea.
Will France follow Ireland's call in accordance with the legal opinion of the International Court of Justice, which states that countries should "take steps to prevent trade or investment relations" that maintain illegal Israeli settlements on land France recognises as part of the state of Palestine?
Third, France has an estimated 4,000 binationals serving in Israel's military right now.
Some have been taking part in war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide as documented and verified by France's leading human rights NGOs.
Yet none have been arrested, not even binational snipers accused of summary executions of Palestinian medical staff, or those accused of torture against Palestinian prisoners — the cases linger in court — while neighbouring Belgium has started to arrest Israeli war criminal suspects.
Beyond internal housekeeping, France has a lot more to do on the international stage.
Will it join other EU member states in supporting South Africa's case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israel, or will it continue to allow Netanyahu to fly from Hungary to the US using France's airspace in violation of the Rome Statute of the ICC, to which France is a founding member?
Will it join Slovenia and Sweden in banning far-right fascist ministers of the Israeli government, or will it shy away, as it did in November 2024, and allow supremacist minister Bezalel Smotrich to attend a (later cancelled) private event on French territory?
Perhaps most importantly, France has not yet convinced Italy or Germany to join the vast majority of EU governments in favour of suspending the trade chapter of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
Despite unprecedented discussions, Europeans again fell into Netanyahu’s trap when he unilaterally decided to bomb Iran and used it as another excuse to postpone any concrete EU measures against his devastating policies.
France has a duty to deliver as a former colonial power in the region, but also as one of the many countries who collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, sending tens of thousands of innocent women and men to death.
Our duty as Europeans is to ensure that both nations live in peace and security: the local Palestinian nation, who never took part in the Holocaust unlike some of our European grandparents, and the new Israeli nation that was created following the Holocaust, at the expense of millions of innocent Palestinians.
It matters that France recognized the state of Palestine. But it matters even more to prevent what history will recognise as a genocide.
If I ever return on a mission to the Palestinian Territories with Macron's parliamentarians, I will no longer be embarrassed to visit a mere technical office representing France to Palestine: it will then be France's embassy to the — still occupied — state of Palestine.
Yet as president Macron met with injured children from Gaza last April in Egypt, I doubt he told them France will recognise the State of Palestine to heal their wounds.
Maybe he felt the same way that I felt when I visited France's navy ship Dixmude, which he had stationed only 39km away from Gaza in 2023-2024 to provide urgent medical care to thousands of evacuees.
I kept thinking: France's army is right next to Gaza, it could bring livesaving aid to millions. If only there was more political will.
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
Schams El Ghoneimi was policy adviser on the Middle East and North Africa for Renew Europe, president Emmanuel Macron's political group at the European Parliament, from 2020 to 2025.
Schams El Ghoneimi was policy adviser on the Middle East and North Africa for Renew Europe, president Emmanuel Macron's political group at the European Parliament, from 2020 to 2025.