French President Emmanuel Macron devoted much his official visit to Saudi Arabia to talks on a plan for long-term peace in the Middle East with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In his visit to the kingdom, Mr Macron signalled his willingness to forge ahead on international diplomacy through strong personal connections with world leaders. It also allowed him to distance himself from political turmoil at home, where the government has collapsed.
Prime minister Michel Barnier lost a vote of no-confidence shortly after Mr Macron returned to Paris on Wednesday, after visiting AlUla heritage site in the Saudi desert.
French President
In Saudi Arabia, the French President held two meetings over three days with Prince Mohammed – one after his arrival on Tuesday with cabinet ministers and a second dinner in which they were alone. The leaders signalled their "willingness to move forward" on Rafale fighter jets, which is a "major change in bilateral relations", said Mr Macron.
It remains unclear how far the discussions on Saudi Arabia's purchase of about 50 French-made Dassault Aviation warplanes had progressed amid competition from the US and UK.
Speaking to journalists during the trip, including The National, Mr Macron devoted a large part of the discussion to his views on Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and Syria. The interview was dominated by the Middle East situation and only sparingly focused on the crisis at home. Protocol reduces the scope of discussions on French politics during an official visit abroad.
Palestinian statehood
Mr Macron's position on supporting a two-state solution highlighted a need to keep working with Arab partners, including the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He announced he would co-chair a conference on a Palestinian state with the Crown Prince next June with a venue yet to be determined.
Saudi Arabia in September launched a global alliance for the implementation of a two-state solution that has garnered strong support, including from the EU, but has been shunned by Israel.
"The domestic instability in France doesn't undermine Macron's margin of manoeuvre when it comes to foreign and defence policy," Rym Momtaz, editor in chief of Carnegie Europe’s blog Strategic Europe, told The National. "It may become an issue when it comes to anything that requires money because the defence budget is dependent on the domestic political scene."
On Lebanon, meanwhile, Mr Macron said the priority was to keep a recently announced ceasefire in place despite violations, while working towards rebuilding the country stricken by intense Israeli bombardment. "This is a very important issue for us, in which we want to be able to play our diplomatic and economic role, and bring on the Europeans," he said.
A "road map" to strengthen the Lebanese army, while also supporting the redeployment of 10,000 of its soldiers to south Lebanon, was on the agenda of Tuesday's dinner with the Crown Prince, the French President said. France has deployed "liaison officers in Lebanon", he said, and hopes for the election of a Lebanese president "in a not too distant future," after more than two years of vacancy.
Saudi Arabia appears likely to participate in reconstruction efforts, estimated by the World Bank to cost $8.5 billion. Mr Macron said Prince Mohammed "does not need convincing on the principle", while insisting on the need to stop Iran-backed Hezbollah from rebuilding its military arsenal in south Lebanon. This includes blocking weapons deliveries from Syria, which is why border surveillance is a "priority" with several of France's partners, said Mr Macron, in an apparent reference to Israel.
But Mr Macron also maintained ambiguity on when France might recognise Palestinian statehood, saying he was not opposed to it but that it should be accompanied by "movements of reciprocal recognition", in an apparent reference to a possible thawing of Saudi-Israeli relations that are under discussion with the US. "What is also important to me is that we can trigger a movement of recognition in favour of Israel, which will also make it possible to provide answers in terms of security for Israel and to convince people that the two-state solution is a solution that is relevant for Israel itself," he said.
Mr Macron is aware that recognition must be backed by an international coalition for maximum impact, Ms Momtaz told The National. "We might be in a situation of a race against time with, on one hand, the push by far-right parties in the ruling coalition to annex the West Bank, and on the other, the need to create legal facts on the ground to preserve what can be preserved of a Palestinian state," she said.
Possible outcomes
When pressed about plans announced by the Israeli far right to annex the occupied West Bank, which would end all possibility of a Palestinian state, Mr Macron said he "excluded nothing", including imposing sanctions, but did not clarify the measures to which he was referring. "Everything is possible," he said.
Like the EU, the US, the UK and Canada, France has issued sanctions on extremist settlers in the West Bank, but doing so with individual ministers, particularly far-right hardliners such as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has garnered little traction in Brussels. Mr Macron has been trying to tread a fine line in his relations with Israel by asserting his full support to its security while doing little to conceal his difficult relations with its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejects the idea of a Palestinian state.
"Everyone is lucid about the political reality in Israel today," Mr Macron said, highlighting "very serious" Israeli violations of international law in Jerusalem and the West Bank that "have nothing to do with the fight against terrorism".
"They are encouraged by extremists who want a never-ending colonisation and break the possibility of a two-state solution," he added, which necessitated "political clarification" in Israel.
These ambiguities expose French – and the international community's – helplessness in the face of Israel's refusal to allow for the establishment of a Palestinian state, including from the opposition to Mr Netanyahu, said Laure Foucher, a senior Middle East research fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.
"Linking normalisation [of Israeli-Saudi relations] to the French recognition of a Palestinian state poses a number of problems, especially because there is absolutely no indication that normalisation will happen anytime soon ... on the contrary. That allows France to postpone indefinitely its position on recognition of Palestinian statehood," she told The National. Prince Mohammed has stated his country would not move forward with the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state.
Questions remain about what the forum next June could achieve, said Martin Konecny, director of the European Middle East Project think tank in Brussels. "The question is whether this conference will clearly promote a sovereign and contiguous state with its capital in East Jerusalem. Or whether it'll go for a fake state ... a set of disconnected Palestinian enclaves under Israeli control and de facto apartheid," Mr Konecny said.
'More bite' on Iran
Though the EU is deeply divided on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it has never failed to uphold its commitment to a two-state solution. These divisions are one of the key reasons that have so far blocked any serious discussion on revoking its trade association agreement with Israel on the grounds that it violates its human rights clause, but a formal annexation of the West Bank, which may be further emboldened by US president-elect Donald Trump, could force the EU to reconsider, not least to maintain a coherent approach to the conflict, Mr Foucher said.
The EU is Israel's foremost trading partner and revoking the agreement would be a major economic setback for Mr Netanyahu. "It's unclear whether financial obstacles can change ideological decisions, but it may create conditions for a public debate in Israel on the cost of colonisation for the state," Ms Foucher said.
In his interview, Mr Macron also clarified his vision on Iran, saying for the first time that he wanted to link its nuclear enrichment programme to its support of paramilitary groups in the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, and ballistic attacks against Israel.
Israel's success at weakening Hezbollah, a key ally of Syria, appeared to have precipitated a rapid advance of Syrian rebel groups on Aleppo and now, on Hama, where Syrian government forces are pressing forth with a counter-attack. Mr Macron said he viewed the flaring up of what was long seen as a frozen conflict in Syria essentially through a security prism, saying it was important to avoid the resurgence of "terrorist groups", such as ISIS, that could stage attacks on France similar to those in 2014 and 2015.
Mr Macron pushed for a hard line on Iran, saying he wanted to collaborate with the US and Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, to work on all three fronts on Iran, with surveillance mechanisms to have security in the region. The E3 countries – France, Germany and the UK – have recently teamed up with the US to have Tehran censured by the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors for its lack of co-operation on nuclear issues.
"I think this is the only way to deal with the Iranian issue in a holistic, comprehensive and long-term manner," he said, calling on mechanisms that have "more bite" because of Iran's apparent rapid progress in atomic activity. "The progress that has been made by the Iranians is such – at one point we lost visibility given the reality that had unfolded – that we will have to find something with more bite, if I may put it that way," Mr Macron said.
