Full interview: French President Emmanuel Macron

Mr. President, if you're ready, we'll dive right in.

Thank you.

You know, most countries in the world recognize Palestinian statehood.

It's 147 of 193 countries at the UN.

But France is going to be the first Western UN Security Council member to do so.

What conditions are there for this?

Look, thank you, and thank you for being here and offering me the opportunity to have such a discussion.

I think it was a necessity first to decide this recognition, and I will announce it on the 22nd of September at the United Nations, precisely because we are at a very moment where, if we want peace and security for all in the region, we have to preserve the condition of a political perspective for everybody.

So we will announce a recognition, but which is the beginning of a political process and a peace and security plan for everybody.

So right after this recognition, we have a first phase, which is, I would say, the emergency phase.

Cease-fire, release of all the stages, and third, restoring the humanitarian roads and the stabilization of Gaza.

We have a second package, which is the day after.

We will revert on that, how to organize Gaza in terms of governance, security, and reconstruction.

And third, package the perspective of the two states.

But recognizing a Palestinian state today is the only way to provide a political solution to a situation which has to stop.

But you are not making the release of the hostages a condition before recognition.

It will be for us a requirement very clearly before opening, for instance, any embassy in Palestine.

But during weeks and weeks, months and months, we worked very hard with the Qatari, and I want to command Qatar and Egypt for their role in these negotiations with the U.S. administration and with Israel precisely to get these release of hostages.

But let's be clear.

If we conditionate this move to, I would say, the agreement of those who just don't want to stop this war, it's an endless process.

So this is a clear condition before we will open an embassy.

This is the first series of conditions and requirements we will put in the peace process.

But we will announce in 20 seconds this recognition of Palestinian state.

So Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this is a reckless decision.

That's the word he used.

He said it gives Hamas little incentive to actually start diplomacy to release the hostages.

Why do you disagree with that sequencing?

I think probably this is an excessive word, and I disagree with this approach.

Why?

Because the objective of Hamas is absolutely not to create a Palestinian state.

The objective of Hamas is to destroy Israel, to convince the maximum number of people that they have no chance to have peace and stability and precisely a Palestinian state, and to kill the maximum number of Israeli people.

And this is why.

If we want to stop this war, if we want to isolate Hamas, the recognition process and the peace plan which goes with this recognition process is a precondition.

So my first point is to say I don't answer the Hamas with that.

I don't meet the expectations of Hamas.

Hamas is just obsessed by destroying Israel.

But I recognize the legitimacy of so many Palestinian people who want a state, who are a people, they want a nation, they want a state, and we should not push them towards Hamas.

If we don't offer them a political perspective and such a recognition, the unique answer will be security and they will be completely trapped by Hamas as the unique option.

My second point is, thanks to this recognition and thanks to the diplomatic move we launched, we started to isolate Hamas because we,

at the New York Declaration, which was voted, as you know, by 142 countries, we gathered all the Arab League states, all the leaders of the regions to work closely with us to precisely dismantle and disarm Hamas.

Till now they were not engaged in such a move.

Now we gathered all these states, all these people to work closely with us in this move.

So I think this is why we can create the condition of a concrete action.

First, to give this right to the Palestinian people.

Second, to isolate Hamas from the rest of the Palestinians and the whole region and precisely build security.

But let me tell you something which is for me very important in this context.

Israel had wonderful security results against Hezbollah, Hamas, top leaders, and managed to neutralize a lot of top decision makers of terrorist groups.

They did it.

This is their merit.

But in terms of fighting against Hamas, this is a failure today.

What is a failure?

Because they killed all the key leaders.

This is a success.

But at the beginning of this war, you had more or less 25,000 Hamas fighters.

The Israeli army killed probably half of them.

But Hamas managed to recruit the equivalent.

You have as many fighters as the very beginning, which is the best evidence of the fact if we want to dismantle Hamas, the total war is not the answer.

Because it's just killing the credibility of Israel.

And by the way, weakening and killing our own credibility if we don't make a move as the one we are organizing.

But you just pointed to something that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would say, well, this is why we need to continue until we get rid of every Hamas member.

You're saying you can't kill that idea.

You need to provide a different idea?

Exactly.

But this is the whole perspective.

And look at the situation, not just, by the way, in Gaza, but everywhere in the region.

Hamas was clearly not backed by a lot of people before the 7th of October.

If you took the polls in Gaza, but in all the countries of the region, they were very low in all the polls.

Today, the level of support is much higher.

Because they are making the mistake, in fact, to reduce all the perspective of the Palestinians to the Hamas.

What we have to say is, we want the dismantling of Hamas.

You had this success, there is no more top leaders.

We want to isolate them.

We want to bring everybody working with us to dismantle the Hamas.

But recognizing this right to have a Palestinian state through a diplomatic channel, this is just giving another channel and offering a political way and isolating Hamas.

So I think there is no future with the option which would be just, let's kill the maximum number of Hamas people because they just recruit others and others.

Because each time they launch this type of operation, they kill so many civilians that they are just destroying their own reputation and credibility.

And they are creating an unsustainable framework of security in the whole region.

But since October 7th, popular support in Israel for a Palestinian state has also declined.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has been opposed for a very, very long time.

And now he says that, just look at those attacks that day.

If you allow for any kind of Palestinian state, it will be a launchpad for terrorism.

I mean, that is his argument that this shows you can't allow for the safety and security of Israel if there are two states.

Why is he wrong?

First, I want to say that the 7th of October was a total trauma for everybody in our country here because we had so many French people being killed during the 7th of October, terrorist attack launched by Hamas.

and it was for us one of the biggest terrorist attacks against our own fellow citizens.

But we did share and we do share the pain and the sufferer of Israeli people and so many families.

And for me, the top priority remains the release of hostages.

And I met very regularly families of hostages.

And I have to say that what they leave

is unbearable.

And I had the opportunity to meet with them.

and so many of them and what they describe is absolutely unbearable.

But I consider that if we want precisely to build a sustainable peace for Israel itself and for Israeli people, a political process and the recognition of a Palestinian state, if this state recognizes the right of Israel to live and defend itself,

is demilitarized, has security forces with a vetting process by Israel with obviously a proper governance and reform governance.

And it's precisely, we have a series of reform which are part of the process.

But that's it, right?

You're talking about recognizing the Palestinian Authority which has some governance over the West Bank already was working with Israeli security forces.

But Hamas came to power through the ballot box

in the first place.

Look, if we are honest, it's totally different.

And this is why I think let's accept the fact that a lot of people worked very hard to kill the credibility of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza years ago.

And Hamas appeared as precisely a sort of alternative option.

But terrorist attacks were launched by Hamas, not by Palestinian Authority.

And if we say all those living in Gaza and all those backing a Palestinian state are de facto the support of Hamas, there is no hand to this war except the day you kill everybody.

And this is terrible.

So we have to recognize that the Palestinian Authority has to be reformed.

The governance is not satisfactory today.

We need a new...

The leader is nearly 90 years ago.

You have a new...

We need a new Palestinian Authority.

But let's just remark and please notice with me that thanks to the recognition process we launched, for the first time for many years.

We got the 9th of June a series of clear commitments from the Palestinian Authority.

They refused till now.

Their reform, a new vice president being elected, reform of the education program,

a pay for slay, obviously, program as well with the monitoring by a U.S. audit structure.

So...

And they denounced the attack.

They denounced October 7th.

For the very first time...

20 months later.

This is true.

But for what?

Because we made this move.

So the recognition is the way as well to re-engage and bring them back to the table.

And my point is to say,

let's isolate Hamas and let's focus on the dismantling of Hamas from a military and a political point of view.

In order to do so, we have to re-engage with those who can be, I would say, a political achievement for Palestinian people.

And this is why the recognition is so important.

And if we revert to West Bank, one of the key elements which triggered my decision to announce in July the perspective of the recognition for the 22nd of September is the vote of the Knesset.

When the Knesset decided to start the settlements again in West Bank, it was the best evidence of the fact that they don't want to fight against Hamas.

There is no Hamas in West Bank.

They just want to destroy the existing political bodies and the possibility of the two states.

And I really believe this is a terrible mistake for Israel itself because in doing so, they just kill any other perspective that war.

But when you, I understand the argument you are making, but it has put you at direct odds with the Trump administration who argue that your decision to make this recognition announcement along with all these UN members that it, in fact, kills the diplomacy they had underway.

They said they were working to get, for example, the tax money from the Israelis to hand back over to the Palestinian Authority, that they were doing practical things on the ground to help Palestinians.

Secretary Rubio said that West Bank division you were talking about with the settlements, he drew a direct line to your recognition.

Why do you think they're blaming you for that?

Look, first, I think we all work very hard in order to improve the situation of people on the ground.

And let me tell you that France,

a lot of French people, French doctors, French citizens, French members of NGOs are working very hard with our administration as well to help Palestinian people and during the past years we work very hard and find a lot of actions as well being led by UNRWA.

Second, I think my objective is precisely to provide another perspective.

We are closely coordinated with the U.S. administration when we speak about the ceasefire and the release of stages.

We were always in close coordination

with the Secretary of State or key President Trump's advisers

in order to work with Qatar, Egypt, and Israel on the release of a stage of ceasefire.

But your administration is focusing on the day after.

And what we propose is a full-fledged plan where we have first the emergency package.

So let's deliver the release of all those stages, ceasefire, and humanitarian access.

The day we have that, we start the day after.

And I think we are very convergent with the work which is being done by your administration.

What we want is a de facto governance in Gaza with clearly a sort of transitional administration,

including the Palestinian Authority, excluding clearly Hamas, but with a vetting process of Israel and an association of all the neighbors.

We have a security package in this day after approach, which is let's scale up the training of the policemen and security forces of the Palestinians.

Who will do that?

We are already doing so.

Many countries of the region.

It does exist, but we need a scale up.

And in parallel, we proposed and we work very closely with the United Kingdom and all the leaders of the region precisely to offer a multi, I would say, an international

force to be deployed in Gaza with a UN mandate, which is a unique framework to be defended and which could be legitimate to assist and back, I would say, these policemen and security forces.

But you know Israel

does not trust the United Nations at all.

This is a UN framework, but this, first, they would have a vetting process of all the structure and it would involve Jordan, Egypt, and some others are ready as well to finance.

But obviously, it is to be made in close coordination with Israel.

And in this security package, obviously, the core element is a dismantling of Hamas.

There is no other option if you want to fix the situation to disarm the Hamas and precisely to demobilize so many fighters

to organize what we call a DDR process, which is very familiar to all the experts in this type of situation.

And this is in this day after for Gaza in the security package that we can organize such a DDR vis-à-vis Hamas and to be sure that Hamas will never be involved in the governance, but that Hamas will be disarmed, dismantled, with some key people to leave Gaza and some others to be derogated and radicalized and the weapons to be taken.

In order to do so, you need clear security forces here, you need these international forces to be here.

And obviously, we have the reconstruction.

On that, I think there is a strong alignment with the United States.

My point is the recognition and the process we launched with that is the only way to bring with us on this track all the neighbors and key countries in order to deliver such a package.

And look at the situation today when Egypt, when so many leaders of the region are not comfortable with what is being done, you need to re-engage them and this is exactly what we are doing.

But my point is to say if we don't have this full package, the day after is impossible because today, de facto, you are accepting the displacement of population in Gaza City.

how do you want a day after to be possible if you displace thousands of people?

Well, exactly on this point.

When you say day after, that means when the war ends and some kind of rebuilding happens.

What you're talking about with the Trump administration is this idea of having Palestinians leave Gaza by choice, they say, but some would say that is a step towards ethnic cleansing.

In fact, an independent commission set up by the UN concluded Israel has a, quote, intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as defined by the Genocide Convention.

Does France agree with that report?

No, we don't qualify as a genocide what's happening because it is not a political statement.

This is the judges and or the historians to qualify a genocide by a series of evidence and a clear jurisprudence and clear elements.

So you reject that report and that finding?

No, I don't reject the report.

This is not my point.

My point is it should not be a political debate.

What's happening is clearly a lot of civilians are being killed de facto on the ground and the project is to displace people.

So I think this is a big mistake and this is where I try to convince your administration that if we agree on the day after and we want this de facto authority, this security package, the dismantling of Hamas and the reconstruction, let's work on the current day

if you accept de facto

Israel to displace these people you will never see a day after.

And by the way, I look very carefully at all the plans being shared by your administration or shared by experts working for your administration.

they always reiterate let's work and build Gaza for Gazians.

It means that they are ready to preserve and protect

Palestinian people because Gazians are those who are living in Gaza.

But if the precondition of such a plan is to push them out, this is just a craziness.

So we should not be, for the credibility of the United States, for the credibility of France, we cannot be implicitly or explicitly complacent with such a project because such a project we know it and by the way all the security experts even in Israel are very clear on the fact it will be a humanitarian disaster.

And this project will kill the possibility of a day after.

So we have to be very explicit on the fact that attacking civilians just to get a few terrorists and a few fighters is clearly not acceptable but displacing people in order just to take a territory which is not in the hands of Israel in order to prepare the day after is not just totally crazy but unacceptable

for all of us.

So France has one of the largest both Muslim and Jewish populations in all of Europe.

The U.S. ambassador to France Charles Kushner the father of the son-in-law to the president of the United States Jared's father he published an article and I know you've read it saying France is not dealing with anti-Semitism here in France.

He said not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street synagogues or schools defaced or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized.

Your own interior ministry reported anti-Semitic incidents even at preschools.

Do you accept this criticism as genuine and valid?

Not at all.

I think this is a mistake and an acceptable statement for somebody who is supposed to be a diplomat.

Unacceptable statement.

Yes.

Never a French ambassador will be allowed to do so.

So either you are a person who wants to express freely fine if you are a diplomat you have to follow the rule of diplomacy and I'm not the one this is you to pay the ambassador of the United States in France but the taxpayer money is not properly used to finance this kind of statement.

So this is not a speech a letter or a word of an ambassador this is unacceptable.

Now the matter is much more important and the matter about anti-Semitism is for me one of my top priorities.

I was the first president in France to adopt the definition of anti-Semitism making it the equivalent of anti-Semitism

and I've always been very engaged against anti-Semitism we've worked very hard during the past few years in order to precisely

re-engage have faster sanctions and I never neglected this topic.

Do you know in the US sometimes people hear criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic?

No.

You're saying it's different.

No.

My point is to say you cannot reject the existence of Israel.

Anti-Sionism is unacceptable and is anti-Semitism but it doesn't mean that you are not allowed to be in disagreement with the government of Israel otherwise we will become crazy.

I'm sorry but I want to fight very hard against anti-Semitism I'm deadly against any anti-Sionist speech but I do endorse to be in disagreement with Prime Minister Netanyahu and some of his ministers on many topics.

It doesn't make me an anti-Semitic otherwise we are completely trapped in an impossible world and this is precisely what the public debate makes this situation completely crazy.

If we want peace and stability and unity we have to be precise, sharp and respectful.

so in this country for many years we had this problem with anti-Semitism like in a lot of other countries what I disagree with is the argument made by your ambassador and the Prime Minister of Israel in another public letter making a link between the recognition anti-Semitism you have a surge of anti-Semitism in the US and you don't recognize you have a surge of anti-Semitism in Germany nothing to deal with recognition everywhere we have

such a surge of anti-Semitism it started before the 7th of October

a lot of these guys

expressed their anti-Semitism the 7th of October itself

as awful it could be but they did and it increased after we have to fight against this phenomenon we have to raid first we have to sanction we just passed a law for our high schools and universities to improve the regulations and to be in a situation to sanction all the anti-Semitism being expressed there so we are very hard we work very hard with the Jewish community in our country and

Jewish people are part of the DNA of the French Republic so no chance anybody here will abandon the situation

has this hurt your relationship with the US?

no I don't think so

because you do have a few other points of friction right now or different views than the Trump administration

but my objective on this issue is very clearly to engage on the basis of the plan we will put on the table with the US administration and there is an important work which is made by Mr. Witkoff Secretary Rubio but as well Gerard Kushner and Tony Blair so we had many exchanges with these people and they work very hard on important ideas

so my objective is clearly to engage with this administration and to show and to show that we can clearly articulate

what they have in mind and a full-fledged peace and security plan for all

I want to ask you about what's happening here in Europe in regard to Russia

NATO jets were scrambled twice within just the past few weeks because of these Russian drones that have been crossing into Poland and into Romania it's the first time in NATO's history that they had to shoot down enemy crafts that had crossed in do you believe that these incursions could have been a mistake as President Trump has suggested

very clearly Russia is a destabilizing and aggressive power in Europe

they increased during the past few weeks their attacks against Kiev and killing a lot of civilians they destroyed official buildings of the Ukrainian government but as well the premises of the UK government of the European Union and at the same time during the same weeks they violated the Polish and the Romanian air

there is no mistake there is just a project which is to destroy the maximum territories of Ukraine to have a victory in Ukraine and just to highlight what they want the weakness of NATO

NATO says they're still investigating they're not as certain as you seem to be that Russia did this intentionally

I just say this is not totally this is not a specific point if we had a situation where they were declining or decreasing their attacks against Kiev and on the battlefield I could accept this argument my point is to say it's largely beyond that my point is to say look at what they did during the past few weeks so I sincerely believe that your president was committed and is committed to make peace

in Ukraine and he engaged he took the risk to make a summit with President Putin in Anchorage and he asked for negotiations and I think he's right but at the same time I have to just to recognize that there is no clear willingness of President Putin to be sincerely engaged in such a move because as we were working on a diplomatic way as we were

trying to organize bilateral trilateral quadrilateral summit

the Russians were increasing their assaults in Donbass but not just in Donbass intensified provocations on one side and attacks on Kiev on the other side so I just look at the facts and your president is as well looking at the facts so now what do we do we have to increase sanctions against Russia but we have to find a way to precisely put more pressure on Russia to bring them back at the table in parallel let me insist on one point when we came

to Washington DC a series of European leaders with President Zelensky we took a commitment we will work to provide to Ukraine security guarantees and we delivered a few days ago here in Paris we gathered what we call the coalition of the willing you have 30 countries working together in order to provide the day after peace security guarantees to Ukraine so we have all these elements now with an historical commitment of the Europeans to provide the security guarantees to Ukraine what we need

now is Ukraine to be at the table with Russia and negotiating what a peace agreement could be on territory on security guarantee on the escalation on recovery etc.

and you don't see any evidence of Russian interest so now we have

to step up and we need political military and economic surge in order to bring them back at the table and to negotiate

so to that point because it's now more than a month since that Alaska summit that big risk you said President Trump took when he's been asked so why not put sanctions or secondary tariffs on Russia he points back here at Europe and the consumption of Russian oil and gas that still takes place I know Hungary and Slovakia for example continue to use it

this is true and we are fixing it and we had discussion with Ursula von der Leyen and she made a great work with her team to fix that but let's be honest this is very marginal this is not a key driver today we decreased by more than 80% the consumption of oil and gas and I can tell you because we were not the most impacted as a country because we were less dependent on this oil oil and gas coming from Russia but we have to finalize to finish the job this is true but now it's clearly much more

than what we have to do what we have to do we have to step up our support to Ukraine

and we have to provide a way to better resist to the new attacks on Kiev and civilians

what's the delay?

on the sanctions or tariffs

as soon as possible if it depends just on me tomorrow but it doesn't just depend on me

so I hope I think we have to react collectively if you want my strong view I think it's very important I think we all agree we want peace we all agree the problem is Russia because they don't want peace so now we have to increase the pressure to convince Russia to come back at the table

because the Trump administration has pointed to the idea that there are billions of dollars sitting in European bank accounts that could be seized for example or that you know here you could put more tariffs on China or sanctions on China

are these valid arguments by the administration or is it a diversion?

regarding the frozen assets we are all very much attached to

to be compliant with international rules and you cannot say these assets from the central bank even in such a situation and I think it's a matter of credibility and it's very important that our countries remain the garant and do respect the international laws because this is our problem everywhere if we speak about Middle East if we speak about the situation in Ukraine when some countries start to disrespect international laws and when we are not sufficiently strong this is the beginning

of a total chaos so we will respect international law we are predictable and we will not do all

impossible things with these frozen assets we already took them as not as a collateral but we took this frozen asset and all the proceeds coming from this frozen asset were used to finance our effort part of our effort to Ukraine this is the first point as for your second point it was sorry I asked about

the China aspect that the Trump administration would like you to push back on China more

look I think we will have our own diplomacy on China and we are very much attached

to our independence which is normal and we have a de-risking strategy but we are not in a decoupling strategy

so that's a no on the pressure from the administration to do that

but my point is let's focus on some secondary sanctions if they make sense I think what we what we have to do is to engage a serious dialogue in order to see where and in which capacity Russia is helped by third countries and to increase the pressure so I think this approach is a good one but it should be targeted and directly related to Russia and I think what I don't think what we what we will do as Europeans with the US administration it is working hard in all

capacity by capacity product by product to see the key countries allowing Russia sometimes to have a third way and to avoid sanctions or to benefit from the current situation this is what we call the secondary sanction because you don't sanction directly Russia but a third country which is helping them and this job has to be made has already started technically I'm totally in favor of this job

and just final question here to ask you again about NATO the US has not contributed fighter jets to that new effort that was just recently announced after the drone incursions the Supreme Allied Commander is an American but does that signal something to you does that concern you that the United States isn't more muscular here

no I'm not concerned or worried about that I want to say that the NATO Secretary General worked very hard and we all gathered and exchanged information with the Polish Prime Minister and the Polish President in the hours right after this what happened and for instance UK and France stepped up and we sent fighters but it's fine we were in a situation to do so and we are totally credible but at the same time look at what the US

is doing on the eastern flank of NATO you are a very strong contributor and reliable partner so I don't want to diminish this role and your commitment and I think your President was very clear about his commitment to NATO

but I'm totally in line with the fact that the Europeans have to step up I've defended for years the fact that we need more independence more strategic autonomy in Europe and we need a stronger European pillar this is why by the way right after my first election I started to increase the budget of our army and in 10 years we will have doubled this budget and I'm already in favour of having

all the Europeans increasing their budget their defence expenditures and as well building an actual

industry research and development basis for defence and security working together and building a strong consistent European pillar in NATO because it's fair that the US wants to focus much more on its own security or wants to work much more on the Pacific side

and asks the Europeans to be more engaged and committed for their own security I share this perspective and this is one of the priorities of the Europeans

Mr. President thank you for your time today

thank you very much for being here and offering me this opportunity to explain our views

thank you

thank you thank you thank you thank you

thank you thank you