With his sometimes unclear statements about the war in Gaza, the French president irritated and angered a lot of people. The French are currently wondering about their president’s Middle East policy. And the world is amazed too. No Western political leader talks as much as he does. But none is more difficult to read than the French. Macron’s line on the war in the Middle East meanders, it seemingly oscillates wildly. The newspaper Le Figaro uses a metaphor from meteorology: “tourbillon”, whirlwind. It’s all there: the rapid speed of Macron’s statements, his driven inconsistency, the resulting confusion. Le Monde also uses the weather: “Macron obscures his message” – with his many statements, with this cascade of gestures and votes. You can no longer recognize your priorities behind it. You can even find this in the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay.
Immediately after the Hamas terrorist attacks, Macron was clear: his solidarity with Israel matched what was heard from other Western capitals in tone and clarity. France has recently experienced a lot of suffering due to Islamist terrorism: Hamas’s attack on young people at a rave party reminded the French of the night of terror in the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in 2015. Of course, Macron also gave Israel the right to defend itself Counterattack in Gaza. He called on the French to remain united in this difficult time and not to “import” the conflict. This is an objective concern: France has a large Jewish community and a very large Muslim community.
The urgent appeal for republican unity offered a foreshadowing of what was to follow: French domestic policy always and inevitably trumps foreign policy in this matter. Macron was then the last of all the heads of state and government from similarly large Western democracies to go to Israel to show his solidarity in presence – after Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden, after the British Rishi Sunak and “even” after the Italian one Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, as the French media highlighted with a malicious adverb. The Élysée explained the late trip by saying that the president first had to deal with the terrorist attack in a high school in Arras, northern France, in which a teacher was killed. On another occasion it was said that he could hardly have gone there at the same time as Biden, as if that had actually been planned. The malaise was recognized. But it should be even bigger.
France’s ambassadors to the Arab world are also distraught. When Macron met with Israeli leaders, he said that in order to fight Hamas, we now have to think about an international coalition like the one that was built against the terrorist organization “Islamic State.” But what did the French president want to say? Did he also mean that foreign ground troops could intervene in the fight? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t even respond to the statement, no wonder: Israel’s government will hardly allow itself to be cleared of its conflict with its mortal enemy. After a few hours, the Élysée clarified the president’s idea with a hasty communiqué. Macron, it was said, meant to say that one could draw inspiration from cooperation in the fight against IS, for example when it comes to exchanging information. That was more than a clarification: it was a correction. As Le Figaro reports, a dozen French ambassadors stationed in the Arab world subsequently complained about the president’s policies in an unprecedented diplomatic correspondence. It is far too close to Israel, and there is great resentment about it in their countries. France, they wrote, must now quickly return to its traditional “balance” in Middle Eastern issues.
The balance was maintained for decades, even if it sometimes required those in power to do a balancing act. At the latest under President Nicolas Sarkozy, France nestled closer to Israel’s side. This change was not openly debated. Macron has been trying to get back to the old balance for a few weeks now – and is confusing everyone. What’s more, he apparently doesn’t consult with anyone before launching new initiatives, such as the international aid conference for Gaza in Paris at the beginning of November. Eighty countries sent delegations, only a few were high-level. Macron called for a “humanitarian pause” so that the Palestinian civilian population could be helped with medicine, food and fuel. The summit disappointed even the aid organizations; it was a solo effort by Macron. On the occasion, the president’s advisers assured that they were deliberately not talking about a “ceasefire” because it was unthinkable at the moment: Israel would not negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas, which it has vowed to destroy. That’s why they’re calling for a “humanitarian break” – a choice of words, as the Élysée pointed out, that others would have used afterwards. Or to put it another way: Macron is avant-garde in this crisis, he dictates the “wording”.
Later, the French president’s behavior became even more questionable: Why didn’t Macron take part in the march against anti-Semitism? A large “march for the republic and against anti-Semitism” was announced in Paris, because the number of anti-Semitic gestures and actions has also increased in France. The Presidents of Parliament called for this. Macron decided early on not to take part because he thought the rally was being deliberately exploited by the extreme right and left. The weekend before, the commemoration of the end of the First World War took place. Then Macron explained his decision to the disappointed great-granddaughter of the famous Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus. “I’ve never taken part in a demonstration,” he said. He is a man of action. The cameras filmed the scene, the microphones picked up everything. There was defiance in the answer. To mitigate his absence, Macron wrote an open letter expressing his dismay at the growing anti-Semitism. He was there “in thought and with his heart”. But many French people resented him for not marching.
Then an interview by Macron with the British BBC. In it, he criticized Israel with unprecedented severity for the military operation in Gaza. “De facto,” said Macron, “civilians are being bombed today. These babies, these women, these elderly people are being bombed and killed.” There is “no justification” and “no legitimacy” for this. France is therefore urging Israel to stop. Was Macron actually calling for a unilateral ceasefire? Without consultation with the partner states? At the same time hectic and “lame duck” His ambassadors to the Arab world were satisfied. But Netanyahu reacted sharply. Responsibility for all the suffering lies solely with Hamas. Don’t let Paris teach you any moral lessons. Once again the Elysée had to clarify, qualify and correct the president’s words. Macron did not call for a unilateral ceasefire by Israel, it said in another communiqué, but rather for “humanitarian ceasefires.” That’s what he told his Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog on the phone. But by then the whirlwind had already been unleashed.
Macron owes a lot of his political success to a formula: “en même temps,” he often says. This is French for simultaneously, at the same time – but also for both and. Macron always moves in the uncertain middle, neither left nor right. So he took away almost all of the voters from the Socialists and the Gaullists. In foreign policy, however, “en même temps” is rarely a viable option. This was already seen in the first phase of the war in Ukraine. There, too, Macron initially attempted a balancing act, showing his support for Kiev and at the same time not wanting to snub Moscow. That didn’t help. In the Middle East, “en même temps” is actually very sensitive. There is probably another reason for Macron’s fever, one that is closely related to his personal situation. He is still at the beginning of his second term as president, with almost four years left. But since the second mandate is also the last, his light is already fading: he is increasingly changing from half king to “lame duck”.
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