Macron’s ultimate goal is to reveal there is a global counterweight to Trump’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, and to ramp up the pressure for peace. Comparisons are already being built with France’s defiance under Jacques Chirac to stand up to the U.S. over the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — a position also articulated in a landmark speech at the U.N.
There is, of course, a strong domestic political motive too. European leaders are conscious of their necessary to ride a wave of public anger about the war, which is only growing as the death toll in Gaza surges. The pollster YouGov has found public support for Israel in Western Europe is plumbing historic lows.
But how much influence does Macron actually have? Even the French admit the grandstanding and large gestures in New York will create no immediate difference to the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as Israeli tanks crunch forward in a ground offensive. Neither Israel nor the United States will hold back becaapply of Macron.
What’s more, the French president’s attempt to reveal a common front also reveals how disunited Western Europe views, particularly when EU and NATO countries are treading on eggshells around Trump becaapply of the war in Ukraine.
Germany, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands won’t be signing up. Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz will not even attfinish, having found more pressing concerns at home. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has insisted she is not in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state “prior to establishing it,” and will arrive a day after Macron’s event.
‘It doesn’t modify anything’
The gamble, according to one European diplomat, who was granted anonymity becaapply of the sensitivity of the subject, was that “Israel would give some ground” as international pressure mounted against it.
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