France hosted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Paris for a meeting on Tuesday, during which French President Emmanuel Macron committed to helping the PA draft a constitution for a future state.
Macron, whose country led the charge in recognizing a Palestinian state during the UN General Assembly in September, said France and the PA would set up a joint committee to work on drawing up a new framework for the state.
“This committee will be responsible for working on all legal aspects: constitutional, institutional and organizational,” he told reporters, adding that Abbas had presented him with the first draft of a potential constitution.
He added France would contribute 100 million euros ($116.62 million) in humanitarian aid to Gaza for 2025.
Ahead of the meeting, France raised its concern with the PA about recent illicit payments Ramallah made to Palestinian security prisoners, a senior French official told The Times of Israel.
Abbas ousted PA Finance Minister Omar Bitar on Monday for signing off on payments to Palestinian security prisoners through an old mechanism that awarded them based on the length of their sentence, a Palestinian official and a second source familiar with the matter revealed to The Times of Israel on Monday.
The payments amounted to an apparent violation of Ramallah’s pledge to France and other key backers in the international community that the PA would reform its prisoner payment system, which critics have dubbed “pay-to-slay.”
While Abbas signed legislation in February to end the old system, the new mechanism that conditions welfare payments strictly on a recipient’s financial need has not yet been fully rolled out. Bitar’s firing also highlighted the domestic pushback that the PA is facing for the move.
After their meeting at the Elysee Palace, Macron told reporters that Abbas committed to launching an audit by an American company to certify that pay-to-slay is no longer in place.
It’s unclear whether Macron was referring to the audit that Ramallah invited the Trump administration to carry out in order to certify that the reform is being implemented.
Ramallah is hoping that a US team will come to the West Bank at the beginning of 2026 to carry out the audit, a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel on Monday.
In September, Macron said his decision to recognize a Palestinian state hinged on commitments from the PA that included the disarmament of Hamas, excluding the terror group from future governance and implementing an in-depth overhaul of Palestinian governance.
Israel has long rejected the formation of a Palestinian state, and accused France and other nations that recognized Palestinian statehood recently of “rewarding Hamas.” Israel has also repeatedly proclaimed that the Palestinian Authority cannot play any role in governing postwar Gaza, although the idea has remained popular among Israel’s Western allies.
After the meeting, Abbas renewed his commitment to “reforms,” including “holding presidential and parliamentary elections after the end of the war.”
“We are nearing completion of a draft of the provisional constitution of the state of Palestine and the laws on elections and political parties,” he said, adding that he agreed “to the swift establishment of the constitutional committee.”
“We are committed to a culture of dialogue and peace,” Abbas said. “And we want a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law, transparency, justice, pluralism and the rotation of power.”
During the joint press conference, Macron also warned that any Israeli plans for annexation in the West Bank would be a “red line” and would provoke a European reaction.
“Plans for partial or total annexation, whether legal or de facto, constitute a red line to which we will respond strongly with our European partners,” he said.
“The violence of the settlers and the acceleration of settlement projects are reaching new heights, threatening the stability of the West Bank and constituting violations of international law,” Macron added.
Since the beginning of October, the West Bank has seen a sharp increase in settler attacks, coinciding with the annual olive harvest. In that time, settlers, and sometimes soldiers, have carried out near-daily violence against olive pickers, who sometimes include volunteers from Israel and abroad, Jewish and otherwise.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday that it recorded 264 settler attacks that caused casualties, property damage, or both during October.
The attacks come amid soaring levels of settler violence since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.
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