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French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron’s de­ci­sion to recog­nise a Pales­tin­ian state, prompt­ing sim­i­lar moves from oth­er West­ern na­tions, an­gered Is­rael and its U.S. al­ly by putting a two-state so­lu­tion back at the heart of diplo­mat­ic ef­forts to end the dev­as­tat­ing war in Gaza.

In a let­ter to Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu last week, Macron wrote that “our de­ter­mi­na­tion to see the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple have their own state is root­ed in our con­vic­tion that last­ing peace is es­sen­tial to the se­cu­ri­ty of the state of Is­rael.”

France’s diplo­mat­ic ef­forts “stem from our out­rage at the ap­palling hu­man­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter in Gaza, for which there can be no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion,” Macron added. Is­rael on Fri­day de­clared Gaza’s largest city a com­bat zone as the death toll sur­passed 63,000 Pales­tini­ans, ac­cord­ing to the ter­ri­to­ry’s Health Min­istry, since the war start­ed on Oct. 7, 2023, with a Hamas-led at­tack on Is­rael.