Last week French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country will recognize an independent Palestinian state, a surprising and significant move designed to resuscitate the quest for a two-state solution, coming in the context of the ongoing horrors of the war in Gaza.
France is the first of the “Group of Seven” industrialized states — which includes the United States, Canada, Britain, Italy, Germany and Japan — to recognize Palestine. It’s also historically relevant because between Israel’s founding in 1948 and 1967, when the United States took over this role, France was clearly Israel’s most important Western ally and security guarantor.
Israel and the United States have angrily protested the French decision, claiming that it “rewards Hamas” for its ghastly massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But precisely the opposite is true.
Successive Israeli governments adopted a policy of trying to keep Hamas in power.
Palestinian politics are binary. Since the first intifada (uprising) against Israeli rule in 1987, it has been divided between two major parties: Fatah (which controls the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, which governs the small, self-ruled Palestinian zones in the occupied West Bank) and Hamas (which has operated a de facto government in Gaza since it violently expelled Fatah in 2007).
The scope of divergence is hard to overstate. Fatah is a secular nationalist party that seeks a negotiated two-state solution. Hamas seeks an Islamist state in all of “historical Palestine” (Israel and the occupied territories). Fatah is committed to negotiations, while Hamas embraces armed struggle. The two sides agree on little beyond recognizing each other as Palestinians.
(Hamas responded to France’s recognition of a Palestinian state by saying it’s “a positive step in the right direction toward achieving justice for our oppressed Palestinian people and supporting their legitimate right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on all of their occupied territories.”)
Virtually anything that strengthens one weakens the other. Israel understands and has exploited this for decades. For many years, Israel has enthusiastically facilitated the transfer of cash payments from Qatar and other benefactors to support Hamas rule in Gaza. (The governments of Israel and Qatar deny that any of the payments were directly intended for Hamas’ use; both say the funds were intended for humanitarian purposes.)
When the decisive split between Hamas and Fatah occurred in 2007, successive Israeli governments adopted a policy of trying to keep Hamas in power, although encircled and (quite literally) cut down to size in routine wars they called “mowing the grass.” Meanwhile, Israel maintained Fatah and the PA in power — though limited and humiliated — in the self-ruled areas of the West Bank.
In 2015, back when Israel’s current finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, was a newly elected member of the Knesset representing the far-right Jewish Home Party, Smotrich said in an interview, “The Palestinian Authority is a burden, and Hamas is an asset.”
Even after the horrors of Oct. 7, Israel has avoided any serious discussion of a “day after” scenario in Gaza, because anything that does not involve the return of de facto Hamas rule or all-out and open-ended reoccupation of Gaza would inevitably strengthen Fatah — and the quest for an independent Palestinian state.
Strengthening the hand of those Palestinians who might, under the right circumstances, be able to create a Palestinian state to live peacefully alongside Israel is unthinkable to the right-wing coalition that governs Israel. As recently as July 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that any Palestinian state would be “a platform to destroy Israel.” Israel is trying to position itself to annex much or all of the West Bank. If there were a viable “two-state solution” negotiation process in place, or even conceivable under current circumstances, perhaps then there would be compelling arguments against the French move. It could force both sides into defensive crouches or provoke Palestinians to overplay their hands. But no negotiating process exists. Instead, Israel is trying to position itself to annex much or all of the West Bank, thereby cutting off the only pathway to a genuine peace. Religious extremist settlers regularly rampage through villages, further squeezing West Bank Palestinians into smaller and smaller parcels of land. The diplomatic, political and moral imperative is to prevent Israeli annexation by all means necessary. The French decision brings the international community back to the fundamental choice that faces the world. Israelis and Palestinians live in virtually equal numbers in a de facto Israeli state that simultaneously denies both citizenship and independence to the overwhelming number of Palestinians (the 5 million or so who live in the occupied territories). These two groups of people cannot live in peace unless both enjoy self-determination and citizenship. International recognition of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories is a fraught but imperative step to preserve the only pathway for these two long-suffering peoples to live together in neighboring states in peace, security and dignity. France has shown the way. Others, including the United States, should follow.
Hussein Ibish
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. 
