France’s recognition of Palestine was announced by President Emmanuel Macron in July 2025 after a conference he had scheduled on the Israel-Palestine crisis fell apart, and it committed France to formal recognition of the Republic of Palestine and to an exchange of ambassadors. John Kiriakou treated the decision as a hinge point rather than a gesture: “I think you’re right, Ted, that we’re going to look back on this decision as a turning point.”[1]
Why France and not Ireland
Kiriakou drew a deliberate contrast with Ireland’s recognition earlier the same year. The Irish decision, he said, “threw a bone to the Palestinians that was really worth its weight and gold”, but beyond that “all that did was piss off the Israelis” — and it had been expected, “because the Irish have been oppressed, you know, throughout their history.”[2]
France was a different order of thing. “France is one of the historic uh colonial powers in the Middle East. Uh that’s why they speak French in in Syria and and Lebanon, for example.”[2] For a former imperial power in the region “to go out on a limb like this and say enough is enough” carried weight the Irish decision could not, and recognition brought with it not only ambassadors but “presumably French diplomatic support at the United Nations. Remember, France has a Security Council veto.”[3]
He placed France among the leading European Union states alongside Germany, and drew the distinction sharply: “The Germans have thrown their lot in with the Israelis. The French are showing real leadership here.”[1] France, he concluded, “is a colossus here”, and the move was “probably the most important move of Macron’s presidency.”[4][5]
Who is next, and who is last
With recognition granted, Kiriakou said, “the question now is who’s next”, and named Luxembourg, Italy and Portugal as apparently lining up, with others to follow.[3][4]
He read the sequence as the beginning of a collapse rather than an isolated event: “These are the first cracks, right? The first cracks in global or at least western support for Israel.” The United States, he said, would resist to the end — “The United States is going to be the last country to support an independent Palestine, the last one” — but the direction was set, and “the domestic unpopularity of the state of Israel is just going to blow away” in one European country after another.[6][7]
Netanyahu’s objection
Benjamin Netanyahu’s public response, posted on X, deplored the recognition of a Palestinian state “right next to Tel Aviv”. Kiriakou treated the phrasing as revealing rather than rhetorical: a Palestinian state was always going to be next to Tel Aviv, so unless Netanyahu knew something about the laws of physics, the objection only made sense if the intended location was somewhere else entirely — an Indonesian island, or a lopped-off piece of Albania.[8][9]
What struck him was the absence of any diplomatic pretence. A temperate government, he said, would have said it would be the first to recognise a lawful, duly elected Palestinian republic and would be proud to help rebuild as neighbours, objecting only to Hamas. Netanyahu did not say “recognise a terrorist state” or “recognise a Hamas state”; he objected to a Palestinian state, sited where Palestine is.[10]