As President Donald Trump’s administration announced it would not attend a upcoming UN conference seeking a two-state solution for Palestinians, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “strongly rejects” French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state.
Rubio criticized Macron’s “reckless decision,” which he claimed “only serves Hamas propaganda and backs up peace,” in a post on X late on Thursday.
Macron had stated earlier that he would present France’s intention to formally recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September.
I have decided that France will recognize the State of Palestine in accordance with its historic commitment to a just and lasting Middle Eastern, Macron wrote on X.
Out of the 193 UN members, at least 142 nations currently or intend to recognize a Palestinian state. However, several powerful Western nations, including the United States, the UK, and Germany, have resisted doing so.
Norway, Ireland, and Spain, one of the member countries of the European Union, announced in May that they had started the process of recognizing a Palestinian state.
However, Macron’s choice would cause France to become the largest and arguably most powerful nation in Europe, making it one of Israel’s closest allies and G7 member.
Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, criticized the decision, claiming that it “rewards terrorism and carries the risk of establishing yet another Iranian proxy.”
In a post on X, he wrote, “A Palestinian state in these circumstances would serve as a launch pad to annihilate Israel, not to live peacefully next to it.”
Let’s be clear, Netanyahu continued, “Palestinian people do not seek a state alongside Israel, they seek a state rather than Israel.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also described the action as “a disgrace and a surrender to terrorism.” He added that Israel would not permit the creation of a “Palestinian entity” that would “affect our security and threaten our existence.”
President Donald Trump has himself expressed doubts about the viability of a two-state solution, despite the US’s long-held official position. Trump made the suggestion when he returned to the White House in January that the US might “take over” Gaza, relocate its more than two million Palestinians, and create the “Riviera of the Middle East” there.
Rights groups, Arab states, Palestinians, and the UN have all condemned Trump’s plan as equivalent to “ethnic cleansing.”
Washington’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, stated in June that the US still had a view on an independent Palestinian state.
According to Department of State spokesperson Tammy Bruce, Huckabee “speaks for himself,” and Trump and the White House are in charge of making decisions.
The US won’t participate in a upcoming UN conference on the two-state solution, according to State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott on Thursday. The conference, which will be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, aims to provide a roadmap for the resolution of the decades-old conflict and grant recognition of a Palestinian state.
In a press conference, Pigott claimed that Washington would not be present, and that there was “nothing else” to say about the situation.
In response to the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1, 139 people and the capture of more than 200 prisoners in the Palestinian enclave, there is growing pressure on Israel to put an end to its deadly conflict there.
Nearly 60, 000 Palestinians have died as a result of Israel’s subsequent 21-month assault on Gaza, along with 144, 000 others have been injured.
The US, Egypt, and Qatar have been working on a ceasefire for months, but so far nothing has turned out.
28 nations, including the UK, Japan, and a number of European countries, released a joint statement on Monday, calling on Israel to “end this war on Gaza.”
Additionally, the joint statement criticized “the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, who seek to meet their most basic needs of water and food,” as well as the drip feeding of aid.
Source: Aljazeera
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