The recent sharp exchanges between French President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be a wake-up call.
Macron’s dramatic decision to recognize a Palestinian state — announced in the middle of delicate cease-fire negotiations — was not diplomacy.
It was disruption.
For Hamas, still holding hostages and firing rockets, it was the perfect excuse to claim victory and walk away from compromise.
Netanyahu’s outrage was predictable, but justified.
If Europe and its allies genuinely cared about Palestinians, they would never promote a phantom “state” without leaders, borders, or even a basic commitment to protect its people from terrorist domination.
Worse, every Palestinian faction pretending to exercise leadership has consistently refused to resettle its own refugees.
For decades, camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan have been kept frozen in misery while Palestinian leaders demanded not integration into Palestine but a “return” to Israel itself — a plan not to build a state but to dismantle the Jewish one.
Europe’s credibility has been further shredded by its conduct at the United Nations.
In June, when the United States proposed a Security Council resolution pairing a cease-fire with the release of hostages, European governments refused to support it.
Instead, they backed an Algerian resolution that deliberately ignored the hostages’ plight.
That single choice exposed what this recognition campaign is really about: punishing Israel, not protecting lives. Keir Starmer very specifically stated that his support for a Palestinian state was because Israel was continuing its war against Hamas.
France in particular has compounded its loss of credibility by refusing to demand that Hamas be excluded from any future Palestinian government.
Paris insists only that Hamas should be “disarmed.” But a disarmed Hamas with veto power is still Hamas. It ensures that the future “state” would be hostage to terrorists.
Macron is pursuing this recognition campaign at a moment when his approval rating at home languishes in the low 20s, among the weakest of any French president in modern history.
Against that backdrop, it’s now an open secret in Paris that Macron’s eyes are less on France than on New York, where he hopes to position himself as a candidate for secretary-general of the United Nations. Recognition of a Palestinian state, even at the cost of prolonging war, is a currency he believes will buy him votes in the General Assembly.
This makes Europe’s recognition drive not just reckless but cynical.
It hands Hamas propaganda, while rewarding a political program that has never sought coexistence. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it plainly: premature recognitions directly collapsed cease-fire talks. Symbolism gave Hamas a victory, and civilians—Israeli and Palestinian alike — paid the price.
Words with Consequences
This column follows my earlier piece “Token Recognition” by outlining the legal consequences leaders like Macron and Keir Starmer should face.
Their words weren’t just naïve.
They were knowingly or recklessly destructive, prolonging suffering in Gaza and Israel alike. International law is clear: those who aid or encourage war crimes and the obstruction of humanitarian cease-fires can be held liable.
International law already provides grounds for accountability.
Article 25 of the Rome Statute criminalizes aiding or abetting through encouragement, a doctrine well established by the Yugoslavia Tribunal in the Tadic and Furundžija cases.
By legitimizing Hamas in the middle of a war, European leaders arguably gave the group the political oxygen it needed to continue fighting.
Likewise, the refusal to support Israel in exercising lawful self-defense — while pressing symbolic measures that prolonged hostilities — could be cast as a breach of international obligations of alliance and of the duty under Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions to ensure respect for humanitarian law.
Paths to Accountability
- At the International Criminal Court (ICC): symbolic recognition during cease-fire talks could be treated as complicity in prolonging war crimes.
- In European courts with universal jurisdiction: cases may be filed once immunity lapses.
- In U.S. federal courts: if American victims or financial transactions are linked, lawsuits could be filed under the Alien Tort Statute or Torture Victim Protection Act.
- In Israel: leaders whose words extended hostages’ captivity or contributed to Israeli deaths could face prosecution.
None of this is unprecedented.
The proceedings against Netanyahu himself show that international law already reaches into active conflicts when political will aligns.
The principle is simple: immunity is not impunity.
Why This Matters
Symbolic recognition may sound harmless, but in war, symbolism can kill. Macron’s timing handed Hamas both a propaganda win and a battlefield advantage.
The consequences were predictable: collapsed talks, renewed bombardments, prolonged captivity, and continued civilian deaths.
History is full of leaders who once seemed untouchable but ultimately faced judgment. Every document preserved, every testimony recorded, every filing prepared builds the case that when political shields fall, accountability will follow.
Recognizing a Palestinian state in the middle of a war was not an act of peacebuilding.
It was a strategic blunder — one that emboldened terrorists, betrayed actual Palestinians, and prolonged suffering for both sides. Leaders in Paris, London, and elsewhere must be reminded: the law is not blind to the consequences of their words.
It sees more than they think, remembers longer than they hope, and when the time comes, it will judge.
Mark L. Cohen practices law and was counsel at White & Case starting in 2001, after serving as international lawyer and senior legal consultant for the French aluminum producer Pechiney. Cohen was a senior consultant at a Ford Foundation Commission, an adviser to the PBS television program “The Advocates,” and assistant attorney general in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He teaches U.S. history at the business school in Lille l’EDHEC. Read Mark L. Cohen’s Reports — More Here.
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