French President Emmanuel Macron's calls for an "Olympic truce" in the run-up to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have gone unheeded. After scaling down his ambitions, the president, who has been focused on his domestic political challenges since calling snap elections in June, seemed set to leverage the opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, on Friday, July 26, to step up his meetings with foreign leaders, even though he will not be in a position to undertake major diplomatic initiatives.
Before heading to Trocadéro square to watch the parade of Olympic delegations along the Seine river, the hundred or so national leaders gathered in Paris are first scheduled to mingle at a reception at the Elysée Palace in the early afternoon. US First Lady Jill Biden is expected to attend, along with very many European leaders. Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to be represented by a vice prime minister, while Western sanctions have meant that Vladimir Putin was not invited, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, ultimately decided to stay in Kyiv.
The war in Ukraine has become bogged down, with Russia seizing the initiative in the eastern part of the country, 29 months after the start of the conflict. Fighting in the Gaza Strip, which has already claimed nearly 40,000 lives, has been ongoing since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, which caused some 1,200 Israeli casualties. The Elysée had hoped to make a new attempt at mediation to quell the violent conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet while the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, who has been accused of supporting the armed militias in the region, is present in Paris, his Congolese counterpart, Félix Tshisekedi, has declined the invitation.
In the morning, Macron was due to meet with Argentina's far-right president, Javier Milei, for their first one-on-one talks since Milei came to power in Buenos Aires, in December 2023. Moreover, he was also scheduled to meet with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. The two leaders will "reaffirm their commitment to continue their joint fight against terrorism and anti-Semitism," according to the Elysée. "In this context, [Macron] will confirm France's commitment to ensuring the safety of the Israeli athletes."
On Thursday, Israel warned of the threat of "terrorist attacks" against its athletes and nationals visiting Paris by Iranian-backed groups. Earlier in the week, the French president had defended the participation of Israeli athletes in the Olympics, although the Palestine Olympic Committee (POC) and some members of the La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) party had called for their exclusion, demands which were promptly rejected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Macron had stated on the France 2 television station and on Radio France broadcaster that Benjamin Netanyahu would be "welcome" to attend the opening ceremony, despite International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan's application, in May, for an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister on charges of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity."
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