On the morning of July 23, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France met to discuss the Gaza crisis at a 112-year-old baroque revival mansion overlooking Lake Tegel in Berlin.

Mr. Macron told Mr. Merz that he was under immense pressure at home and would likely recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations in late September, according to two officials familiar with the discussion, who requested anonymity to discuss private diplomatic conversations. It was a timeline, Mr. Merz responded, that gave everyone room to consider their next move.

The next day, without telling the Germans, Mr. Macron announced his decision publicly, saying that recognition of Palestine showed France’s “commitment to a just and durable peace.”

It was part of a remarkable surge of Middle East diplomacy among the European powers that accelerated on July 19, with the widespread publication of horrific pictures of starving children, and peaked 10 days later with a similar announcement on a Palestinian state by Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain.

Together, these moves amounted to a declaration of independence from the Trump Administration on a major strategic issue that the Europeans have long tried to approach in tandem. Interviews with a dozen officials and diplomats revealed a frantic and at times uncoordinated push for peace after years of debate, propelled by the conclusion they could no longer wait for the United States to lead or restrain Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

A key part of the diplomatic effort was an eight-point plan developed quietly by British officials over the past six months and circulated among Europeans on July 29 by Jonathan Powell, Mr. Starmer’s national security adviser and a veteran mediator. Mr. Powell was an architect of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of bloody conflict in Northern Ireland, and has advised on several conflicts since.