Israel’s Saar says no Macron visit as France plans to recognise Palestinian state
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has urged France to reconsider its plan to recognise a Palestinian state during a call with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, Israel’s Foreign Ministry says.
The ministry said Saar also told Barrot there was “no room” for a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Israel as long as Paris “persists in its initiative and efforts that harm Israel’s interests”.
Macron announced in July that France would recognise an independent Palestinian state at the UN next month in New York, where it will be co-hosting a conference on the two-state solution alongside Saudi Arabia.
US’s Rubio blames countries recognising Palestine for Israeli annexation push
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has effectively blamed France and other countries who plan to recognise a Palestinian state for an Israeli push to annex the occupied West Bank.
Rubio was asked by a reporter during a visit to Ecuador for his reaction to an Israeli annexation drive that has been gaining steam, with far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich this week calling on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to annex most of the territory.
“We told all these countries, we told them all. We said, if you guys do this recognition stuff – it’s all fake, it’s not even real – if you do it, you’re going to create big problems,” Rubio said.
Describing the annexation push as “not a final thing”, the top US diplomat said he wouldn’t comment further. “What I am going to say is it was wholly predictable,” he told reporters.
“We told [these countries] that if they did this, if they went through with this thing, there wasn’t going to be a Palestinian state … and we told them that it would lead to these sort of reciprocal actions and it would make a [Gaza] ceasefire harder.”
Experts say Israel has maintained a policy of de facto annexation in the West Bank for years – long before France and other Western countries recently announced plans to recognise an independent Palestinian state.
They also say Smotrich and other far-right members of the Israeli government have been using Israel’s war on Gaza as a way to solidify the country’s control over the West Bank.
Israel has de facto been annexing the West Bank since 1967. The Oslo accords did nothing to stop the theft of Palestinian land through illegal settlements and buffer zones.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/
US imposes fresh sanctions on Palestinian NGOs
The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) for cooperating with the International Criminal Court, which has also been a target of US sanctions under the second Trump administration.
“These entities have directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
The three groups have been added to the Treasury’s Special Designated Nationals list, “a list of individuals and companies owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of, targeted countries”, according to its website.
The US is currently pursuing a pressure campaign against the court over its issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
We condemn in the strongest terms the draconian sanctions imposed by The Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on our organisations: @alhaq_org , @AlMezanCenter & @pchrgaza/1
— Al-Haq الحق (@alhaq_org) September 4, 2025
US sanctions ‘cement complicity in Israel’s crimes’: Legal group
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a US-based legal advocacy group, has condemned the Trump administration’s decision to sanction three prominent Palestinian rights groups.
CCR noted that today’s sanctions come months after the US designated Palestinian prisoner advocacy group Addameer, as well as the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese.
“By targeting civil society, human rights organizations, and international mechanisms, the administration is attempting to undermine the infrastructure of support for the most vulnerable communities,” CCR said in a statement.
“This dangerous, authoritarian sequence should alarm us all.”
