Israeli leaders strongly criticized the announcement made Thursday by French President Emmanuel Macron according to which France would recognize in September the state of Palestine.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this decision “rewarded terror” and constituted an existential threat, offering a “launch ramp to destroy” Israel.
“Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek to create a state alongside Israel, they seek to create a state in the place of Israel,” he added.
Foreign Minister Gideon Saar was just as scathing, saying that “a Palestinian state will be a state of Hamas”, in reference to Palestinian activists who attacked Israel in 2023, triggering war in Gaza.
Deputy Prime Minister Yariv Levin, who is also Minister of Justice, described this decision as “direct aid to terrorism” and “black spot in the history of France”.
The Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, promised that Israel “would not allow the creation of a Palestinian entity that would harm our security”.
The Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, judged that the announcement of France “[donnait] To Israel an additional reason “to annex the West Bank which he has occupied since 1967 and to” put an end once and for all to the dangerous illusion of a terrorist Palestinian state “.
On Wednesday, the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, argued a non -binding decision urging the government to impose Israeli sovereignty on the West Bank, thus annexing the territory, a long -standing demand for the Israeli far right.
The opposition figures also criticized Emmanuel Macron’s decision in very harsh terms.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who should present himself against Mr. Netanyahu in the 2026 elections, wrote on X that the French president’s decision was a sign of “moral collapse” and that she “would be thrown into the forgett of history”.
“Recognizing a Palestinian state amounts to rewarding terrorism and encouraging Hamas, an organization that has perpetrated the most horrible massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” wrote on X opposition deputy Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the nationalist party Yisrael Beitenu.
Amichai Chikli, Israeli Minister of the Diaspora and the fight against anti -Semitism, published a video that has become viral on the Internet, in which we see Brigitte Macron repelled her husband Emmanuel Macron with her arms.
“President @emmanuelmacron, on behalf of the Israeli government, here is our response to your recognition of a Palestinian state,” he wrote on X.