French President Emmanuel Macron meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit, Egypt, October 13, 2025. YOAN VALAT/AFP
The date makes this visit symbolic. On Tuesday, November 11, exactly 21 years to the day after the death in a Paris suburb of Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, who was honored by the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron will welcome his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, at the presidential Elysée Palace.
The visit is meant to confirm that Paris has not forgotten its historic commitment to a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel, "after a period during which French diplomacy frayed and broke with its usual consistency and firmness on the Palestinian issue," said historian Vincent Lemire, co-author of the best-selling graphic novel Histoire de Jérusalem (The History of Jerusalem). This invitation also shows that Abbas, a 90-year-old man, worn out, discredited and unpopular even among Palestinians, remains a key interlocutor for French diplomacy.
The French and Palestinian leaders are secondary players in Donald Trump's plan, which led to the ceasefire reached between Hamas and Israel on October 10, intended, in the words of the US president, to bring "everlasting peace" between Israel and Gaza. As a fragile truce holds in the Palestinian enclave and the next steps of the American plan take shape, France seeks to regain influence and give a voice to the Palestinian Authority.
