While two European officials said the conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, would almost certainly be postponed, all four officials POLITICO spoke with said a final decision had not yet been taken.
The United States was reportedly urging allies not to take part, arguing it would reward Hamas for spearheading the Oct. 7 terror attack that sparked the current crisis in Gaza, Reuters reported, citing a leaked diplomatic cable.
Neither Macron’s office nor the U.S. Embassy in Paris immediately responded to a request for comment.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s team had hoped that the event would see European states officially recognize Palestinian statehood and some Middle Eastern states move towards normalizing relations with Israel. However, Paris has already been forced to temper its expectations for the conference due to the outrage over the humanitarian catastrophe playing out in Gaza.
Macron had attempted to lobby European states to jointly recognize a Palestinian state — which the French leader said he would do in April under certain conditions — but a breakthrough failed to materialize in recent weeks.
One U.K. government figure said there had been “considerable uncertainty about what [France] was playing at,” and posited that Macron “has his eye on grandeur and legacy.”
