At a joint press conference, U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron offered contrasting views on recent moves by several countries to recognize a Palestinian state.
Asked if such recognition was “a gift to Hamas,” Trump replied:
“Well, I think it honors Hamas and you can’t do that because of October 7th. You just can’t do that. But we want our hostages back and we don’t want them back in, you know, ones and twos and take the next two years to do it. We were the ones that got the hostages back. And I always said, I told Steve, I told Marco, I was always saying the last hostages are going to be the toughest ones. But you can’t honor them by doing anything like you suggest. All you can do is say we want our hostages back and we want we want the war to end. We’re going to want it to end."
"You always have to remember people forget October 7th was one of the most savage days in the history of the world. There’s never been anything like that. We’re talking about babies being sliced in half. You’re talking about young children having their heads chopped off. You can’t forget that.”
Macron acknowledged Trump’s point but defended the recognition decisions by other governments.
"Yesterday, 11 countries did recognize Palestine. It was not a decision taken like that neither by UK nor by Canada nor by France. It’s just a big change,” Macron said. “President Trump is totally right, nobody forgets the 7th of October. I went there a few days after taking families in my hands, and we experienced all together these horrific attacks. And by the way, we lost a lot of French people in these terrorist attacks. But after almost two years of war, what is the result? Once again they killed the top leaders of Hamas - a great achievement - you still have as many Hamas fighters as you had the first day. So it doesn’t work to dismantle the Hamas. This is not the right way to proceed.”
Macron continued: “So we need a full-fledged process and we work very hard on the day after. And I totally share this sequencing: the release of all stages, the ceasefire, resumption of humanitarian aid, the day after in Gaza to stabilize the land. And we need a political perspective, and this is why we took this decision on recognition.”
Trump closed the exchange by reiterating his long-standing support for Israel.
“Well, I have to say that I’m on the side of Israel. I’ve been on the side of Israel really my whole life. And we are going to get a solution. And it’s going to be a solution hopefully that’s good for everybody. But it’s time to stop.”