ISTANBUL 

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar denounced a plan by France to recognize a Palestinian state, warning that it would be a “reward for terrorism.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday in an interview broadcast on France 5 television that France is planning to recognize the state of Palestine and may make the move in June during an international conference co-chaired with Saudi Arabia.

“A ‘unilateral recognition’ of a fictional Palestinian state, by any country, in the reality that we all know, will be a prize for terror and a boost for Hamas,” claimed Sa’ar on X.

He alleged that “these kinds of actions will not bring peace, security and stability in our region closer -- but the opposite: they only push them further away.”

Macron said "we must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months.” 

He said the planned conference on the implementation of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is expected to take place in New York, could mark a turning point.

"Our goal is to chair this conference (on Palestine) with Saudi Arabia sometime in June, where we could finalize this movement of mutual recognition by several parties," he said.

His remarks come amid growing international calls for a political resolution to the conflict in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 50,000 people since October 2023, and the wider Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

In February 2024, Macron said that recognizing a Palestinian state is "not a taboo for France," underlining that such a move is a moral and political necessity.

"We owe it to the Palestinians, whose aspirations have been trampled on for too long. We owe it to the Israelis, who experienced the greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century. We owe it to a region that yearns to escape the promoters of chaos and the sowers of revenge," he said at the time.

Currently, 147 of the 193 UN member states recognize the state of Palestine. Last May, Spain, Ireland and Norway joined the list, bringing the total number of European Union countries granting recognition to 10. The others are Bulgaria, Cyprus, Malta, Hungary, Poland, Sweden and Romania.

Several other European countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro and Belarus, have also recognized Palestinian statehood.