🇫🇷 Macron Responds to Netanyahu: France Rejects Gaza Reoccupation and Calls for Lasting Peace
Emmanuel Macron has responded to Netanyahu’s inflammatory letter, denouncing antisemitism and Gaza’s reoccupation while urging a two-state solution as the only path to regional security and stability.
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Last week, on Sunday 17 August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a letter to Emmanuel Macron, criticising France for an “alarming rise of antisemitism”, going as far as directly accusing Macron of feeding antisemitism by planning to recognise Palestine.
President Emmanuel Macron has, today, personally responded to Netanyahu's letter, and Le Monde published the initial French text earlier today.
I have translated this letter into English for your information, my dear readers, so you have a clearer picture of how France is engaging with Israel on this situation and at this time.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
I have duly received your letter of 17 August, which you decided to make public even before I had received it. That is why my reply, by way of parallelism, will also be made public for the sake of clarity in our debates, but for my part I wished to let you know this and I shall wait until you have taken note of it, that is the elementary courtesy.
The fight against antisemitism must never be a matter of instrumentalisation, nor can it fuel any disagreement between Israel and France.
As one of the very first actions I undertook after my election, I chose, within the tragic walls of the Vel d’Hiv on 16 July 2017, to solemnly endorse – and you had wished to be at my side that day – the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which condemns anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism. It was the first time that a French President had gone so far, and I stand by that fully. The protection of our Jewish compatriots against the rise of antisemitism has been, from day one, an absolute priority of my actions. This responsibility lies with France, and the entirety of the State’s services is committed to it. It cannot be the object of any manipulation at a time when we are facing the instrumentalisation of a conflict that does not belong to France but weighs upon our national cohesion and the security of our citizens.
While I promulgated on 31 July the law put forward by the Senate concerning the fight against antisemitism in higher education; while we held, from February to April, the conferences on combating antisemitism; while France has assigned 15,000 police officers to protect community gathering places after 7 October; and while both police and volunteers mobilised for the safety of Israeli athletes and tourists during the Olympic and Paralympic Games last summer, such accusations of inaction in the face of a scourge we are fighting with all our strength are unacceptable and offend France as a whole.
History teaches us that wherever antisemitism takes root, all forms of racism and hatred prosper alongside it. It is in the name of this lesson that the French Republic has been the tireless enemy of antisemitism since the Revolution of 1789. Consequently, no one in good faith can doubt that I remain, and will remain, the guarantor of the imperative necessity to combat this abomination everywhere and always. And it would be a mistake to explain, or even to justify, antisemitism in France by the decisions I have taken. Antisemitism in our country has deep roots, long nourished by the far right, and today is also fuelled by the far left, which essentialises the Jewish community and supports hatred against it. All antisemitism is a betrayal of the Republic and of its universalism.
But the IHRA definition cannot absolve Israel of the policies it pursues today in Gaza and in the other Palestinian territories. We have serious disagreements, but faithful in this to the friendship binding France and the people of Israel, I have sought to maintain the closest dialogue with you – a dialogue founded upon our unwavering commitment to Israel’s right to exist and to security.
Our determination that the Palestinian people should have a state is rooted in our conviction that lasting peace is essential to Israel’s security, to its full regional integration in a Middle East finally at peace, to a logic of normalisation which we support and which must be brought to completion as swiftly as possible. This lasting peace will come through the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, recognising Israel and its right to security, demilitarised, living in peace at your side.
In no way does this dual conviction reflect any indulgence that would allow Hamas or other terrorist groups to use such a state to threaten your country in the future. The Palestinian state must mean the end of Hamas. We are convinced, after nearly two years of Israeli operations in Gaza, that this is today the only way truly to eradicate Hamas and to prevent Israeli youth from being consumed in a permanent war, devastating for the Palestinians of Gaza, but also for Israel and the entire region.
To achieve this, together with Saudi Arabia, we gathered in New York on 28–29 July a very large number of Arab, Western and other governments, who signalled their willingness to engage in a strategy for the day after, including taking on transitional security responsibilities in Gaza as part of a stabilisation mission, supporting and contributing to the disarmament of terrorist groups beginning with Hamas, helping to renew viable Palestinian governance freed from Hamas’s grip, and rebuilding a territory now laid waste.
This commitment is unprecedented. It stems from our indignation in the face of the appalling humanitarian disaster in Gaza that nothing can justify. It also arises from the conviction that a mass exodus of Gazans driven by famine and violence, beyond the moral indignity it represents, would have direct and lasting effects on regional and international security, including that of Israel and of Europe. Above all, it results from an unprecedented collective will to bring about lasting peace in a Middle East where Israel has, over these past two years, significantly helped reduce another threat, that of Iran.
This readiness to contribute to the post-war settlement in Gaza goes hand in hand with the resolve to move in the same direction regarding the rest of the occupied Palestinian Territories and to transform them into a separate, demilitarised and reformed state, living in peace at your side. A Palestinian state where hatred of the other will have no place, whether in education or in other public policies. We are ready collectively to be held accountable for the commitments made in New York, as well as those made by President Abbas in his letter of 9 June 2025.
This path is difficult, but it gives Israel a powerful and new hand over its future: extended normalisation on the scale of the Muslim world; the end of the permanent conflict that has affected your people before and since the founding of the State of Israel; the end of a serious deterioration in Israel’s moral image, which has become both the pretext and the driver of a new antisemitism that we must fight globally.
This commitment is unprecedented, and I urge you not to dismiss it out of hand, in the name of our friendship with the people of Israel.
Mr Prime Minister,
Today, your government has decided on a new phase of the offensive leading to the reoccupation of Gaza. I am convinced, and I share this conviction with many partners, that such a measure would impact the life of the Israeli people for decades to come, impose an unbearable cost upon your Palestinian neighbours, and risk missing the historic opportunity before you, as the Prime Minister who has led Israel for the longest period in its history, and before the Israeli people, to move beyond the battle Israel is waging today at a loss, in order to win the battle for peace. The opportunity to transform the military gains Israel has achieved on regional fronts into a lasting political victory, to the benefit of its security and prosperity.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have been relentless in striving to achieve a ceasefire for the release of all hostages. This is our priority. France lost more than 50 of its children in the pogrom of 7 October. Three French hostages did not survive. Thinking of all of them, of the Bibas and David families today, of the pain and suffering of so many families still waiting for the return of their loved ones, and of all the suffering endured by Gazans, my conviction is that to act with humanity and courage to end this war is our collective duty, and the only realistic way forward. We are offering you a path for what comes next, credible, engaging for the international community and regional partners who will be present for peace. It is your responsibility to seize it.
The occupation of Gaza, the forced displacement of Palestinians, their reduction to famine, the hateful dehumanisation of discourse, the annexation of the West Bank, none of these will ever deliver victory to Israel. On the contrary, they will reinforce your country’s isolation, feed those who use it as a pretext for antisemitism, and endanger Jewish communities across the world. The Palestinians will not disappear from the land where they too have roots, and no one sees what path would then remain for Israel’s vocation to endure as both a great democracy and the national home of the Jewish people. In short, such measures will deliver victory to those who refuse to recognise Israel as the friend, reliable ally and trusted partner it is destined to be, and which we wish it to be.
France cannot resign itself to seeing a friendly country plunge into an outburst of violence contrary to its history, its origins and its democratic essence, and to seeing it turn its back on the opportunity that history now offers it. I cannot resign myself to this, and once again I propose to you, as a faithful friend, that we work together, with all international partners, for a lasting peace for you, your people and the whole region. A credible framework for an end to the crisis in Gaza is within reach. A permanent ceasefire is within reach. What other path do you offer today to your allies and to your people?
The barbaric images of Israeli hostage Evyatar David reminded the world, if a reminder were needed, that Hamas must never again represent a threat to Israel nor play any role in future governance in Gaza and the Palestinian territories. With this vile video, the terrorist group continues what it has constantly done over the past two years: wound the Jewish soul at its deepest, thereby offending us all at your side; prolong the ordeal of hostages and families; and keep the people of Gaza in unspeakable suffering. In doing so, it also seeks to push you to take irreversible decisions that will serve only its survival and ideological grip, and cast Israel into a future of war, a future that you today have the possibility, and the historic opportunity, to avoid.
France will always be a friend of Israel and of the Palestinians, and it is in this spirit, Mr Prime Minister, that we shall continue our action for peace and the security of all.
It is in this spirit, Mr Prime Minister, that I solemnly call upon you to break away from the deadly and illegal headlong rush into permanent war in Gaza, which exposes your country to indignity and your people to a dead end; to cease the illegal and unjustifiable recolonisation of the West Bank; and to seize the outstretched hand of international partners willing to work towards a future of peace, security and prosperity for Israel and the region.
Emmanuel Macron
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Thank you, Julien Hoez, for translating Emmanuel Macron' breathtaking letter. Surely it offers a path that will save Israel from becoming an international pariah.