The question of recognizing Palestine as a state, revived by Emmanuel Macron on April 9, has been an ongoing French political and diplomatic debate for nearly 40 years. The topic dates back to the symbolic proclamation of a Palestinian state by Yasser Arafat (1929-2004), the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in Algiers on November 15, 1988, after the demonstrations of the first Intifada.

According to his entourage, the French president might take the plunge in June during a conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, which he will co-chair with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But before Macron, other French presidents have also made promises on this issue, none of which have materialized. In France, the Israeli-Palestinian question pertains as much to foreign policy as it does to domestic politics.

In 1988, a week after the historic meeting in Algiers, former French president François Mitterrand (1916-1996) declared in the daily Libération that "the recognition of a Palestinian state poses no problem of principle for France." Six years earlier, in March 1982, in a pioneering speech before the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, the Socialist president had mentioned the Palestinians' right to have a state and encouraged dialogue with the PLO – much to the displeasure of his host, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (1913-1992), a Likud hardliner, and of his own party, which was then entirely committed to the Israeli cause.

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