On September 22 at the UN, Macron officially recognized the existence of a Palestinian state. It's a token gesture because Macron knows he has no influence over the policies of the Israeli and American leaders, who are opposed to this recognition. And he knows it won't even stop the executioner’s hand.
This recognition has provoked Netanyahu's anger and the hostility of the French right and far right. Conversely, it's supported by many who are revolted by Israel’s murderous annexation policy.
But this recognition is as late as it is hypocritical. It took 65,000 Gazans killed, 163,000 wounded, a genocide and a famine for Macron to change his narrative! He recognizes a Palestinian state when Gaza is nothing but a field of ruins and as Netanyahu prepares to completely annex the West Bank.
Macron doesn't care about the fate of the Palestinians. By rebalancing his policy and going back to France's so-called “Arab policy”, Macron aims at strengthening his alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and contemplates the benefits for French capitalists in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere in the region. What he has in mind is Dassault and the CMA CGM shipping group. He’s acting cynically, as the leader of an imperialist power, evaluating future profits just like his distant predecessors did, when they divvied up this strategic oil-rich region with the British and set peoples against each other.
Even when he claims to be acting out of solidarity, Macron dictates his terms. In exchange for recognition, Mahmoud Abbas, the current president of the Palestinian Authority, had to promise to disarm Hamas and exclude it from any future governance. In other words, Macron ’s ready to recognize Palestine, but first, the Palestinian leaders must show their credentials and submit!
The only role that the leaders of imperialism would be willing to give to the leaders of an eventual Palestinian state is that of guards of an open-air prison.
This is the role endorsed by the Palestinian Authority established during the Oslo Accords in 1993 to contain the Palestinian youth uprising. This embryonic state apparatus was supposed to administer territories separated by checkpoints and dividing walls. It was also subject to Israel’s military authority and dependent on international aid. Powerless, corrupt, and in charge of maintaining an unjust order, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority could only discredit themselves. This disrepute allowed Hamas to seize power in Gaza.
For 15 years, Hamas has also kept the population under control, forcing it to accept deprivation, hunting down and executing its opponents while strengthening its military apparatus. Financed by funds from Qatar, with Israel’s consent, Hamas has taken part, in its own way, in maintaining the imperialist order. By launching the attack on October 7, 2023, it sought to forcefully prevent the normalization agreements between Israel and the Arab states. At no time did it consider the foreseeable consequences of this attack for the Gazans.
For almost two years now, the State of Israel has been waging a war of extermination against the Palestinians, an extermination claimed by the far right which governs with Netanyahu. The Palestinian flag is therefore brandished by many as the flag of solidarity with the Palestinians and of protest against imperialist barbarity.
But, politically speaking, the strictly nationalist perspective it symbolizes is a dead end. The goal of a Palestinian national state, even a rump one incapable of economic independence, suits the leaders of Hamas or the PLO. For if they challenge the imperialist order, it is to carve out a place for themselves and prosper, by also exploiting workers, which is what they are already doing. Such a perspective offers nothing but misery and unemployment to the Palestinian masses.
The only real emancipation for Palestinians, as for all oppressed people on the planet and for exploited workers here, will come from the overthrow of the imperialist order and the capitalist system it is built on.
This perspective cannot be conceived without a revolutionary wave that would see the Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese, Jordanian, Egyptian peoples… reject the policies of their respective leaders. And then, everyone would realize that there is room for both peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, to live together, in an egalitarian and democratic way in this region.
Nathalie Arthaud