To go to Israel, or not to go? And for what purpose? Emmanuel Macron has been weighing up the options and assessing the risks and rewards. The French president has been hesitating and getting ready at the same time, as Israel prepares to launch a ground offensive in Gaza. On the sidelines of his official visit to Albania on Tuesday, October 17, Macron conceded that he might visit the Jewish state "in the next few days" or "in the next few weeks." "My desire is to be able to travel [to Israel] when we can obtain a concrete agreement either on non-escalation, or on humanitarian issues and, more broadly, on everything," he said from Tirana.
A visit to Israel by Macron has been under consideration since the Hamas terrorist attacks on the Jewish state on October 7. But the possibility of such a presidential trip gained momentum on Monday, when it became apparent that first German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and subsequently US President Joe Biden, were preparing to visit the region, on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively. Since then, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, announced on Wednesday evening that he too would be visiting the region on Thursday.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's invitation for France to attend a conference on the future of the Palestinian cause on Saturday could have encouraged Macron to visit the Middle East, and thereby assert France's position – which is somewhere between support for Israel against terrorism and concern for the Palestinian cause. But the Elysée Palace has been concerned that the summit would produce a communiqué condemning Israel.
The turmoil that surrounded Biden's visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday has also prompted the Elysée not to hurry. Arriving on Israeli soil for a whirlwind visit – just a few hours after the explosion at a Gaza hospital – the American president shared Israel's view that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (a Hamas ally) was responsible for this massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians. The shooting at Gaza's Al-Ahli Arab hospital appears to have been carried out "by the other team, not — not you," he said during his talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while assuring that he would work with the Israeli government to avoid "more tragedy" for civilians.
The tragedy at the Gaza hospital led to the cancellation of the second part of Biden's trip to Jordan, where he was due to attend a summit in Amman with the Jordanian, Egyptian and Palestinian Authority leaders. A worst-case scenario for Paris if it were to occur again during the French president's trip: No visit to Israel is conceivable without talks with representatives of the Palestinian Authority and the leaders of neighboring states such as Egypt and Jordan.
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