French President Emmanuel Macron continues a trip to Amman on Wednesday aimed at preventing military escalation after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and relaunching the “peace process” for the creation of a Palestinian state. After a first stop Tuesday in Israel, where he presented the condolences of a “friendly country, grieving in the face of the most terrible terrorist act in your history”, the head of state will address the Arab countries of the region.
He will be received by the King of Jordan, Abdullah II, at 11:00 a.m. and could also meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi. He already went to the occupied West Bank on Tuesday to see the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to also show his support for the Palestinian people.
“A Palestinian life is worth an Israeli life,” he insisted, calling on Israel to measure its response in Gaza after the attack which left more than 1,400 dead, mostly civilians, including 30 French nationals. Nine French people are also missing and probably hostages of Hamas in Gaza. “I see, I hear the suffering of the civilian populations in Gaza,” he added as Gazans find themselves trapped in Israeli bombings targeting Hamas. “We urge you, President Macron, to stop this aggression,” Abbas responded.
“Two-state solution”
Emmanuel Macron, himself overtaken by Islamist attacks in France, has therefore taken care to display a balanced policy in the region, with the ambition of playing a role in trying to overcome the earthquake caused by the attack on Hamas. He thus wishes to reactivate the “two-state solution”, Palestinian and Israeli, which seemed to have become obsolete in recent years against a backdrop of progressive normalization of relations between Israel and neighboring Arab countries.
“It is difficult at the moment to talk about the resumption of a peace process,” he conceded while Israel is still healing its wounds after unprecedented massacres of civilians on Israeli soil. “But it is more necessary than ever” to prevent the “most radical terrorist groups” from continuing to prosper, he declared in Ramallah. “There can be no lasting peace if there is no recognition of the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to have a state,” he insisted.
Emmanuel Macron also intends to test with countries in the region his proposal for an international “coalition” to “fight” against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. According to his entourage, it would be a question of creating a new coalition, or of extending to the fight against Hamas the one that has existed since 2014 to fight against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, in which Paris but also Arab countries participate. .
For the moment, experts doubt the possibility of expanding or replicating the coalition targeting Daesh. Many Arab countries do not share the Western position on Hamas. Some are also openly hostile to Israel, notably Baghdad, which does not recognize the very existence of the country. Faced with a risk of the conflict flaring up, the French president also called on Iran, a powerful supporter of Hamas, and its regional allies, Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, to “not take the risk of opening new fronts.