Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

French President Emmanuel Macron shook up world diplomatic circles on July 24 with his announcement that come September, France will recognize Palestine as an independent nation. How much that decision will affect the Israel-Hamas war is debatable, but it certainly ratchets up the pressure on Israel to ease its brutal treatment of millions of defenseless Palestinians in Gaza. Israel may already be getting the message.

On July 27, three days after Macron’s announcement, Israel announced it would begin 10-hour “humanitarian pauses” in certain areas of Gaza to permit some aid convoys into the besieged enclave, and its intention to create a few permanent “humanitarian corridors” via which convoys would travel.

International humanitarian food organizations welcomed the announcement, but noted that much, much more must be done to alleviate the widespread hunger and the starvation that have already begun to claim the weakest Gaza residents, particularly women and children.

The fact that the far-right faction in Israel’s government raised immediate and ferocious objection to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to allow more aid delivery by even a little suggests that Macron’s announcement may be paying off.

France will join scores of nations around the world that recognize a Palestinian state. Of the 193 member countries in the United Nations, 147 have already done so. That’s about 75 percent of the UN membership. Western European nations that do so include Ireland, Spain, Norway, and Sweden.

But none of the G7 nations, including France, that dominate world economic activities has yet taken the Palestinian recognition step. France is also one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, dating back to the world organization’s founding 80 years ago in 1945. Macron’s announcement was bound to generate shock waves in international diplomacy.

And maybe that was his primary goal. French recognition of Palestine certainly won’t of itself halt the fighting in Gaza or lead to a permanent peace settlement. But Macron plans to prepare the diplomatic ground before September’s UN General Assembly, where he says he will make the formal announcement of France’s recognition of Palestine. He’s hoping to persuade other G7 nations, perhaps the United Kingdom and Canada, to do the same.

Israel’s declared goal in Gaza is the destruction of Gaza’s Hamas government and military capability following the October 2023 surprise attack on civilians in southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people and captured 251 more as hostages. That goal is warranted, and would go a long way toward peace in the region.

But it’s becoming more and more evident that Israel, under Netanyahu, doesn’t plan to stop there. Several members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet call openly for total Israeli domination of Gaza, expulsion of its Palestinian residents, and its annexation into Israel. Some of them also advocate annexation of the West Bank, where 500,000 Israeli settlers already live, illegally according to almost all nations of the world.

Netanyahu opposes a two-state solution for the region in conflict, as does his government. A two-state solution would leave Palestinians with the responsibility of governing themselves, and Netanyahu—and an increasing number of the Israeli people—maintain that that situation would subject Israel to perpetual threat of attack. In addition, many Israelis hold to the dream of reconstituting the original biblical boundaries of the Hebrew people, which stretch well beyond the present-day Jewish state.

Until the Trump administration, the United States had officially supported the two-state proposal for decades. Trump’s government has made no official announcement changing the policy. But last month the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said the U.S. government probably no longer supports two sovereign states for Israel and Palestine.

In February, Trump made the grotesque announcement that he, or the United States (it’s not clear which he meant), would “take over Gaza.”

The entire Gaza population—more than two million—would have to be relocated to Egypt and/or Jordan. They have “no alternative” because Israel’s destruction of Gaza makes it no longer habitable, Trump added. He said he would construct six new sites as residential locations for Gaza Palestinians. They wouldn’t have the right to return to Gaza, because “they’re going to have much better housing” in what would amount to their new resettlement camps.

“In the meantime, I would own this,” Trump said, referring to Gaza. “Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent.”

That’s a far cry from postwar Germany and Japan, where America helped the local populations rebuild their devastated countries. The same could be done in Gaza. But that’s not what Trump and Israel have in mind.

There’s no easy solution for the war in Gaza, and not much incentive under the present conditions for anything to deter Israel from further devastation of the zone. But Macron’s Palestinian recognition gamble, coupled with growing international condemnation of Israel, may deflect some of those plans, or at least buy some time toward a ceasefire or peace negotiations.

Western Europe and the United States have historically acted in concert toward the Middle East. But if Trump claims the right for the U.S. to go it alone in foreign policy—“America First”—he can’t very well object if France and other American allies claim the same right for themselves.

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Editor’s note: Since Rick Morain wrote this column, the United Kingdom and Canada have indicated they will follow France’s lead in recognizing Palestine.