Shorouk Express
The decision comes shortly after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he would convene an “emergency call” with the country’s E3 partners — France, Germany and Italy — on Friday to “discuss what we can do urgently to stop the killing and get people the food they desperately need.”
In a furious response to the declaration, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that “Macron’s announcement of his intention to recognize a Palestinian state is a disgrace and a surrender to terrorism, granting a reward and encouragement to the murderers and rapists of Hamas, who carried out the most horrific massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “a Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it.”
Eleven out of 27 EU member countries have already recognized Palestinian statehood, including Spain, Romania, Sweden, Ireland and Bulgaria.
“I welcome France joining Spain and other European countries in recognizing the State of Palestine,” Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said. “Together, we must protect what Netanyahu is trying to destroy. The two-state solution is the only solution.”
The U.N. has warned that Israel is blocking sufficient aid from reaching Gaza, where a growing number of starvation-related deaths have been reported. “People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
