Hosting the “International Conference in Support of Lebanon's People and Sovereignty” in Paris last Thursday, a fundraising event mostly in aid of the Lebanese civilian population, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to be repeating, one year on almost to the day, the format of the November 9th 2023 fundraising operation for the civilian population of Gaza. The two events were each based at the Élysée Palace, the French presidential office, organised in the same manner and with identical objectives.
In the case of the Gaza operation, Macron announced that a total of 1.1 billion euros had been raised, of which 100 million euros was pledged by France. On Thursday, the goal set was to meet that same sum through the pledges of the 53 participating countries.
At the end of the event, French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced 1 billion euros had been pledged, which included 800 million euros for funding of humanitarian aid, and 200 million euros for the Lebanese armed forces. “The international community has answered ‘present’,” declared Barrot. “It is a strong moment of collective mobilisation.”
While it raised large sums for humanitarian aid, last week’s conference will have no greater impact on events in the Middle East than that for Gaza one year ago. Apart from Lebanon, no country was represented in Paris by its president or prime minister. While Macron’s entourage had hoped to include Anthony Blinken among those present in the French capital, the US secretary of state was instead meeting in Doha with Qatar's emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who has been a key figure in efforts for mediation between Israel and Hamas.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Blinken’s absence was, a Macron advisor told the press, “due to issues of agenda, which we understand”. But the empty chair left by Blinken appeared to symbolise the limits of diplomatic initiatives by France, confined to a second role on the international scene, however much that is refuted by Macron’s entourage, one of whom insisted: “We are the only country that speaks to everyone on the ground and that gives us a special responsibility.”
Since the October 7th 2023 Hamas attacks, Macron has launched a number of diplomatic initiatives, including a proposed “anti-Hamas” international coalition, the conference to raise aid for the civilian population of Gaza, the sending of a French navy hospital ship anchored off the coast of Gaza, mooting the recognition of a Palestinian state, a call for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon – and last week the event to raise funds for Lebanon. But on almost every occasion the president’s moves lead to very little, underscoring France’s dwindling influence at a global level.
A year of blowing hot and cold
Former French diplomat Yves Aubin de La Messuzière, 82, speaks with regret about France’s current status in the Middle East, and what he said was “all the credit that France has lost in the region”. An expert on Middle East affairs, a director of the French foreign affairs ministry’s North Africa and Middle East department between 1998 and 2002, and who has served in three ambassadorial posts, La Messuzière argues that “French influence” has been eroded by what were interpreted as prevarications. “When the French president proposed this anti-Hamas coalition, it was very badly regarded by the local leaders and press who saw very well the extent to which it was neither opportune nor operational,” he said. “[In the region], disappointment with Paris is very big.”
Another recognised expert on Middle East affairs is Jean-Paul Chagnollaud, director of the Paris-based Institut de recherche et d’études Méditerranée Moyen-Orient (the Institute of Mediterranean and Middle East Research and Studies). “Emmanuel Macron does not know the Middle-East very well,” said Chagnollaud. “He is aligned in an almost emotional manner with the Israeli positions. It took a lot of time for things to be rebalanced.”
Manifesting a very pro-Israeli position in the weeks that immediately followed the October-7th Hamas attacks, Macron subsequently blew hot and cold: his rare comments critical of the manner of the Israeli riposte were immediately followed by reassurances given to Israeli leaders that they had “the support of France”.
“To go about [an approach of] ‘but at the same time’ in a case so sensitive and strategic does not work,” commented Yves Aubin de La Messuzière, referring to the catchphrase often used in France for Macron’s habit of prevarication, producing both argument and counter-argument in his policy speeches. “The absence of a French spine has ended up costing us dearly,” added La Messuzière.
One year on since the war began in the region, no-one really knows just what Macron’s position really is. The Left accuse him of minimising the crimes committed by the Israeli army, and demand that France introduce sanctions against Israel. Meanwhile, the most pro-Israeli currents within his own centre-right political camp, along with the conservatives and the far-right, accuse him of adopting a pro-Palestinian stance. Member of Parliament Sylvain Maillard, a member of Macron’s Renaissance party, criticised the French president for calling on the international community to place an arms embargo on Israel, which Maillard said was “placing on an equal footing [Israel] and the terrorist movements”.
He fought for a ceasefire in Gaza and then in Lebanon. He continues to engage the strongest pressure possible.
During a two-day official visit to Canada at the end of September, Emmanuel Macron was confronted and booed by pro-Palestinian activists as he came out of a joint press conference with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. “I get myself told off by Palestine[sic], if they knew how we’re battling for things to get better,” he said to journalists at the scene, adding that he understood “the emotion” but that he could not allow people to “talk nonsense”. Similarly, during a walkabout in the southern French city of Marseille in March this year, he was jeered at over the subject of the Israeli-Hamas conflict. When a woman in tears asked him not to leave “these children to die” he replied he was “doing the maximum” for the fighting to stop.
Macron’s entourage express surprise that his efforts to broker a ceasefire are not widely recognised. “He fought for a ceasefire in Gaza and then in Lebanon,” said a source close to the French president, speaking on condition his name was withheld. “He continues to engage the strongest pressure possible. He takes courageous stands.”
Over the past few weeks, the tone of Macron’s comments about the Israeli leadership have hardened significantly. When, on October 5th on public radio France Inter, he called for the end of sales to Israel of weapons “to lead the combat against Gaza”, and then on October 15th, during a cabinet meeting, he told his ministers that Benjamin Netanyahu “must not forget that his country was created by a United Nations decision”, the French president was signing off the distancing of relations with Netanyahu’s government. Last Thursday, reacting to Netanyahu’s repeated claim to be leading a war in the name of “Judaeo-Christian civilisation”, Macron commented: “I am not sure that one defends a civilisation by spreading barbarism oneself.”
Relations have not formally broken off, and during a phone conversation at the beginning of last week he once again assured the Israeli prime minister of “France’s attachment to the security” of Israel. But the statements issued by the French presidential office demonstrate the coldness gaining between the two. On October 21st, the Élysée said Macron “denounced the actions of the Israeli army” against the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). On October 16th, the Élysée announced that during a phone conversation the previous day with Netanyahu, Macron “condemned the indiscriminate Israeli strikes which only lengthened the already intolerable human toll”, and that he “underlined his very strong preoccupation over the situation in the West Bank, the violence against civilians and the acceleration of the continuation of colonisation”.
For IREMMO director Jean-Paul Chagnollaud, “the words used are pretty strong” in such statements. “The call for an arms embargo is a quite strong position, and over which he is quite isolated in the Western world. He took a lot of time to take in what was going on, but his position has visibly evolved.”
In private, Macron no longer hides his lassitude, to say the least, with Netanyahu. “His position hardens as he regards the Israelis as moving beyond the domain of what is bearable,” commented a source who is regular contact with the French president. The mistrust of Netanyahu is also personal, and is remindful of Macron’s experience with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the build up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Macron was one of the last of Western leaders to keep contact open with Putin, before – as French journalist Isabelle Lasserre recounts in her book on the relations between the two men, Liaisons dangereuses – he found himself “shocked and incredulous” in face of the Kremlin’s determination to invade its neighbour.
France’s “responsibilities“ towards Lebanon
The assassination on September 27th of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah represents another episode in the cooling of Israeli-French relations, as revealed by French daily Le Figaro. For while Paris was actively trying to succeed with a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon, in a plan mapped out with Washington, it was to appear as if Netanyahu had been taking Macron for a fool by not sharing his intentions with Paris. Furthermore, the enthusiastic support of the Biden administration over the killing of Nasrallah isolated France, when some among Macron’s advisers, speaking off the record, accused the US of “backing down”.
Beyond the poor personal relations between the two leaders, the expanding regionalisation of the conflict, according to several of the experts and informed sources questioned by Mediapart, explains the mounting French protests over Israel’s conduct. They argue that Paris felt forced to change its tone towards Israel given the longstanding historic and cultural links between France and Lebanon. “It is not a small issue for France,” said one diplomatic source. “We have responsibilities towards Lebanon.”
At the end of last Thursday’s fundraising conference, French foreign affairs minister Jean-Noël Barrot cited Charles de Gaulle, who in 1941 said that “the very name of Lebanon moves something very special in the hearts of every French person”. Yves Aubin de la Messuzière remembers what he calls the “obsession” of late French president Jacques Chirac for Lebanon where, during a visit to the country in 1996, he lauded the “ties of the heart and mind” that united the two nations. “The Lebanese have through the centuries been the only people whose heart has never ceased to beat to the rhythm of the heart of France,” Barrot proclaimed last week.
Macron made his former foreign affairs minister Jean-Yves Le Drian his special envoy to Lebanon. Over recent days, Le Drian has repeatedly warned the French president of the threat of a civil war in Lebanon. Those warnings have been taken seriously. Macron’s diplomatic advisor, Emmanuel Bonne, is also well tuned into the reality on the ground, having worked as an associate researcher with the Beirut-based Centre for Studies and Research about the Contemporary Middle East (CERMOC) before becoming French ambassador to Lebanon between 2015 and 2017. Beyond his official advisors, Macron also has regular discussions with Franco-Lebanese personalities, notably Rodolphe Saadé, chairman and CEO of shipping and media group CMA CGM.
But the undeniable consideration shown by the Élysée towards the events in the Middle East cannot suffice alone. “The hardening of the tone is welcome, but the time has come for sanctions,” argued Yves Aubin de La Messuzière. An advisor to Macron said much the same: “It’s all very well to say that it must stop, but what are the means that we put into it? That is the question right now.”
The perspective of the US elections on November 5th has for many suspended the tectonics of the geopolitical plates. But the vote could possibly offer the French president, who has spent the past year looking out for his diplomatic moment on the world stage, an opportunity to make France’s voice heard.
-------------------------
- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse