Macron to Meet Abbas to Discuss Gaza’s Future

The meeting took place a month after the start of a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas, which ended a two-year war that began after the Palestinian group’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Abbas, 89, has long led the Palestinian Authority, which controls limited territories in the West Bank. Under the current arrangements, the Authority is seen as a possible governing structure for Gaza.

According to the French presidency, the two leaders will discuss “the next steps of the peace plan, particularly issues of security, governance, and reconstruction.”

The ceasefire, brokered on October 10 by U.S. President Donald Trump, has repeatedly been tested by new Israeli strikes and reports of Palestinian attacks on Israeli soldiers. Last week, Trump said that the International Stabilization Forces tasked with monitoring the truce would “soon” begin operating in Gaza.

The meeting also follows Macron’s decision to recognize Palestine as a state, a move he announced in September during the UN summit. The Palestinian Authority called the step “historic and courageous.”

During the talks with Abbas, the French leader plans to discuss maintaining humanitarian access to Gaza and reforming the Palestinian Authority itself. The Élysée Palace emphasized that renewing the governing institutions is essential to building “a democratic and sovereign Palestinian state, living in peace and security alongside Israel.”

However, Reuters sources said that a de facto division of Gaza between the area controlled by Israel and the territory still under Hamas administration is becoming increasingly likely. According to six European officials familiar with the implementation of the next stage of the plan, the process has effectively stalled, and reconstruction will likely be limited to areas under Israeli control. They warned that this could lead to years of isolation for parts of the enclave.

In the first phase of the plan, which took effect on October 10, the Israeli army controls about 53 percent of the coastal territory, including much of the agricultural land, as well as the southern city of Rafah, parts of Gaza City, and other populated areas.

Nearly all of Gaza’s two million residents now live in tent camps and the ruins of destroyed cities across the remaining territory under Hamas control.

The Hamas attack in October 2023 killed 1,221 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to AFP data based on official Israeli sources. In the Israeli army’s retaliatory campaign, more than 69,000 Palestinians—also mostly civilians—were killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The ministry, whose data are considered reliable by the UN, does not specify the number of combatants among the dead but notes that most of the victims were women and children.