Manny Macron has pulled off the improbable feat of recognising something that doesn’t exist, namely the Palestinian state.
Established nations do sometimes take a while to recognise new-fangled states, especially unsavoury ones. Thus, though the Soviet Union was formed in 1922, it took the US 11 years to recognise it. And the People’s Republic of China, formed in 1949, had to wait 30 years for the same honour.
In both cases, diplomatic recognition amounted to acknowledging the status quo. Exactly what status quo is Manny recognising with Palestine? This is how he announced it, on X, where else:
“Given its historic commitment to a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the state of Palestine. The urgent priority today is to end the war in Gaza and to bring relief to the civilian population. Peace is possible.”
Peace is indeed possible, it always is. But it takes a blithering idiot to think that recognising something that doesn’t exist, nor can be realistically hoped ever to exist, is a way of achieving that objective.
But do let’s decorticate Manny’s statement. The first sentence isn’t worded precisely, although it’s clear enough that Manny thinks “a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East” is a jolly good idea, and one to which ‘it’ is committed. But the way he expressed himself, it’s not obvious whether it’s France or “the state of Palestine” that’s thus committed.
Even Manny can’t possibly mean the latter: in a recent poll some 95 per cent of Palestinians expressed quite a different commitment, to wiping the state of Israel off the map. And 65 per cent said they had no interest in a two-state solution whatsoever.
Thus one has to hope Manny meant France, not Palestinians. It’s France, as personified by Manny, that is committed to “a just and sustainable peace” – and hopes that recognising the non-existent state is a way of achieving it.
Since neither side directly involved agrees, that hope seems forlorn. The situation appears to be quite different from what Manny fancies.
The two sides converge in not wanting to create a Palestinian state. Other than that, their interests diverge: Palestinians want to kill every Jew in Israel, for starters. And Israeli Jews would rather not be killed by Hamas.
Sorry, did I say Hamas, not Palestinians? A forgivable slip though, considering that, politically speaking, Palestinians and Hamas are synonymous. The only election ever held in the West Bank and Gaza, in 2006, delivered a Hamas landslide. Since then, no need for another election has arisen.
Hamas is a terrorist organisation, as even Manny must have heard. And the purpose of terrorism, as Lenin kindly explained, is to terrorise. In today’s context, it means that any Hamas state that, hypothetically, could be carved out of Israel’s territory would concentrate all its energies on massacring Israelis in the style of 7 October.
At the time, incidentally, more than two-thirds of Palestinians supported Hamas’s bestial brutality, although that proportion has somewhat gone down since, after Israel didactically demonstrated that actions have consequences.
Manny’s idea is somewhat lacking in novelty appeal. For on 29 November, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed its Resolution 181, recommending the creation of two independent Arab and Jewish states.
Jewish organisations happily accepted the Resolution, but Palestinian Arabs boycotted it. On 15 May, 1948, Arab states invaded Palestine to nip the nascent Jewish state in the bud. The Arabs lost that war, as they have lost every other war they’ve started since.
The situation hasn’t changed one iota. They still don’t want two states. They want one: Hamasia, “from the river to the sea”, with what used to be the State of Israel turned into a mass grave of seven million Jews, going Hitler one million better.
Not seeing that testifies to a schizophrenic divorce from reality, which psychiatric condition was evinced by a statement from Manny’s Foreign Ministry: “The best contribution that France and the UK can bring is to restart the process by bringing all stakeholders around the table, making commitments to the state of Palestine and the security of Israel.”
The UK appeared in that statement because Manny is trying to twist Starmer’s arm into going along with that schizophrenic notion. The latter finds himself squashed between two jaws of the same vice: France, with her traditional anti-Israeli bias, and Labour’s own backbenchers, anti-Semites almost to a man.
Sir Keir is holding them at bay for the time being, but, if I were a betting man, I’d wager that he won’t last long. Israel, after all, is the bulwark of Western civilisation in the Middle East, and no one can accuse Sir Keir of such a civilisational bias.
His bias is quite different, which Starmer proved with his statement the other day: “We are clear that statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people. A ceasefire will put us on a path to the recognition of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution which guarantees peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”
“Guarantees”, no less. On what basis, historical, current or logical, have these people reached the conclusion that a terrorist organisation granted a statehood would guarantee anything other than mass murder? Ask them, I haven’t a clue. One thing I’m certain it won’t guarantee is peace and security. Or is it two things? Whatever.
Deducing the specific from the general, one wonders how Manny and Keir envisage the practicalities involved in contriving a Hamas state. Have they even considered them?
At present, Israel supplies all of Palestine’s (Hamas’s) electricity and water. Something tells me that, should Hamas exercise its “inalienable right” to statehood, that supply will be cut off. How would the terrorists replace it?
And where would they work (digging tunnels for murderers to creep into Israel doesn’t qualify as work)? At present, about a third of their working-age population are unemployed, and the rest mostly do part-time work in Israel. Which domestic industries would attract their talents? None is discernible at the moment.
What currency would the new state use? Would Hamasians continue to use Israeli shekels, as they do now? And where would their capital be? Ramala? The idea mooted in Hamas circles is that the capital of their nascent state will be in Jerusalem, but I’m sure the Israelis will have something to say about that.
How will the new state handle its imports and exports? The West Bank and Gaza have no access to the sea, and all their trade goes through Israeli ports, just as all their human traffic goes through Israeli airports.
These and a myriad other factors show that no Arab state could possibly be created in that territory without Israel’s wholehearted cooperation. And no such thing is forthcoming without Hamas’s renouncing its intention to obliterate Israel, something they aren’t planning to do.
So what is it that Manny wants to recognise, and coerce Starmer into doing the same? Why is he making those asinine noises?
First, 10 per cent of the French population are Muslim, a proportion giving that alien group a considerable political weight. That can be thrown around both electorally and through direct action, aka terrorism and mass rioting. Most of those people support Hamas and hate Jews in general and Israelis in particular.
The reason Starmer hasn’t yet gone along is that Britain’s Muslim population is six per cent, not ten, although in London that proportion is 15 per cent. That’s not big enough for Starmer to jump the gun, but big enough for him to want to give a sop to our domestic Hamas fans.
The second reason is the uncontrollable knee-jerking urge to signal virtue, meaning in this context commitment to any cause aiming to destroy the very civilisation that Israel represents in the Middle East.
Both France’s president and our PM are leftists, meaning they are as virulent of ideology as they are feeble of mind. Their ideology demands a support for Third World fanatics with their inalienable right to massacre Jews (or anyone else who has the misfortune of displeasing them). Jews, on the other hand, are equated in their minds with capitalists, a link established as a scriptural truth by Marx.
I have an idea. I think Manny should next recognise whatever state inhabitants of other planets might want to establish. You may say that no such state exists, and you’ll be right. But then neither does the state Manny will recognise in September.
France doesn’t deserve that spineless nonentity, but then neither does Britain deserve Starmer.
P.S. Speaking of France, our local supermarket sells just four kinds of cognac but 11 kinds of Japanese malt whisky. And yet in the past 25 years I’ve never seen anyone drink any Japanese whisky, offer it to guests or order it in restaurants. Do you sometimes get the feeling that there’s a parallel reality out there, where people prefer Japanese malts to Scotch – and a Palestinian state exists?
I agree completely.
My previously admirable MP, Sir Edward Leigh, has signed the notorious Parliamentary motion calling for the immediate “recognition” (recte, forcible establishment) of a Judaeophobic terrorist state. The anti-Israeli hysteria seems to have spread far beyond the usual socialist suspects.
P.S. If you’re looking for a cheap malt whisky, try the non-vintage Jura. It’s rather bland but not nasty. All other non-vintage malts taste to me as if they came from Japan.
I am a lifelong Isle of Islay man, too late to change now. As for Leigh, I actually met him, at the launch of a book he edited and to which I contrubured an essay. Another contributor was Vincent Nichols, and it was during the party at the Commons that he heard about his appointment as Archbishop of Westminster. At the start of the party, Leigh looked dog-tired. He was slouching in his chair, his tie loosened, his eyes half-closed. However, when it was time for him to make a speech, he sprang to life. His eyes lit up, he jumped out of his chair like a Jack-in-the-box and delivered a rousing oration. Politicians are a different breed, I thouht then.