Empire Strikes Palestine

France and Britain’s Pivot Isn’t About Peace — It’s About Control

The French and the British will punish Trump by siding with Palestinians to oppose Israel. They won’t say it, but they don’t need to. Macron and Starmer’s disagreement with Trump isn’t just about principles; it’s about a shift in power.

What happens when the old empires lose patience with the apprentice they once armed? What happens when the former colonisers decide not just to redraw the conflict they once engineered, but to regulate its fire through subtler means? And what if their arsenal isn’t made of drones or sanctions, but bureaucratic ink asylum policies, legal rulings, symbolic recognitions, and carefully engineered UN manoeuvres? France and Britain don’t need tanks to flex; they’ve discovered that silence, timed correctly, can be more disarming than firepower. And perhaps, most unsettling for Washington, they remember how to play the long game in a region they once claimed as their own theatre of empire.

The claim that France and Britain are siding with the Palestinians to punish Trump or spite Israel seems like tabloid geopolitics at first glance. However, when viewed within the broader context of France’s long-standing ambition to position itself as the de facto leader of the European Union, particularly in the post-Brexit vacuum left by Britain, the manoeuvre takes on new clarity. For Macron, outflanking Germany on foreign policy while projecting a moral high ground in global conflict zones is not just symbolic; it’s a strategic move. In this light, the idea of 'punishing Trump' becomes less about vindictiveness and more about asserting France's capacity to lead the West when the United States abdicates its role. Recognition of Palestine thus becomes not only a geopolitical gesture toward the Global South but a subtle rebuke of Trump’s legacy and a declaration that the EU, under French vision, can shape global narratives without waiting for American permission.

But scratch beneath it, and you’ll find something older, colder, and far more dangerous: imperial containment dressed in democratic robes, possibly revived through a quiet pact of post-American realism. What if recognition of Palestine isn’t merely about justice or international law, but about recalibrating Europe's sphere of control over a conflict it helped create a century ago? France and Britain may not be reacting to Gaza so much as orchestrating a scenario in which American moral fatigue becomes their window for reassertion. The paper trail of asylum rulings and diplomatic condemnations may be less about solidarity with the Palestinians and more about building the scaffolding of a new Western consensus, one that bypasses Washington. In that frame, they aren’t just proving they’ve got the bigger gun. They’re testing how far they can aim it without firing a shot.

Let’s be clear. Trump didn’t engineer the European pivot on Palestine, but he provided the ignition key. His disengagement from Gaza ceasefire negotiations, followed by the bizarre February 2025 proposal to “administer Gaza” via a US-sponsored Arab protectorate, was more than just diplomatically offensive; it was a strategic blunder of imperial proportions. For France, it was an opportunity dressed as outrage. Macron swiftly denounced the plan as a breach of international law, but beneath the legal language was something colder: an opening to reclaim geopolitical relevance. The United States, in its retreat, had dropped the baton, and France, eager to prove its imperial instincts had only evolved, not vanished, picked it up. On 24 July 2025, Macron declared that France would be the first G7 country to recognise Palestine at the UN General Assembly formally. Humanitarian? Perhaps at the surface. Symbolic? Undoubtedly. But strategically, it was a masterstroke, a move that didn’t just challenge the Israeli narrative but dared to sideline the United States as the primary arbiter of Middle Eastern legitimacy. This wasn’t a gesture. It was a pivot toward a new centre of gravity.

Macron knows precisely what he’s invoking. France’s entanglement in the Middle East is not a footnote; it’s foundational. From the backroom carving of the Sykes-Picot Agreement to its colonial mandate over Syria and Lebanon, and its brutal counterinsurgency in Algeria, France played a significant role in shaping the region's instability, as much as its borders. This isn’t just foreign policy; it’s a theatre where France once directed the script. Recognition of Palestine today isn’t a belated moral awakening; it’s a tactical act of imperial recall, a move on the board by a former master player. In doing so, France positions itself not as a neutral observer, but as a rehabilitated overseer, one who believes its civilising role was never entirely revoked, only paused. And in contrast with Trump’s reckless, short-term posturing, Macron appears not just principled but imperial in the classical sense: measured, strategic, and terrifyingly familiar. France doesn’t need troops to intervene; it needs to remind the world that it never really left the stage.

Across the Channel, Britain is playing its cards closer to the vest, but its intent is no less deliberate. Starmer’s government has sanctioned Israeli settlers, suspended trade negotiations, and jointly condemned Netanyahu’s Gaza policy in lockstep with France and Canada. While full recognition of Palestine remains withheld, the machinery is clearly in motion. Britain isn’t just managing domestic optics or pacifying restive Labour backbenchers, it’s sketching out its own post-Brexit identity in a multipolar world. After years spent as Washington’s junior partner, Britain now seeks to rebrand itself as a strategic sovereign. And what better way than through a calibrated divergence from the Trump doctrine on Israel, a low-risk, high-symbolism manoeuvre to prove it can still wield independent moral and geopolitical agency. It’s not just rebellion; it’s rehearsal for a new role on the world stage, one where Britain returns not as an empire, but as referee.

So where does “containment” come in? What if the goal was never peace, but pressure management? European capitals, especially Paris and London, aren’t naive enough to believe that statehood declarations alone can stop rockets or rewrite borders. What they do expect is control over narrative, over optics, and most critically, over the flow of chaos. Recognition becomes a diplomatic release valve, not for Israeli aggression, but for European anxiety. Behind the recognition is something far more urgent than solidarity; it’s the fear of uncontained disruption, a mass refugee surge, accelerated radicalisation, or political destabilisation echoing through European suburbs. In this framing, Palestine is less a partner in peace than a variable in Europe’s internal security calculus. Recognition becomes a tool of anticipatory quarantine. Asylum policy becomes a firewall dressed in legalese. And Gaza is treated not as a human tragedy in need of resolution, but as an infectious crisis, one that must be boxed in, sanitised, and legislated into stillness, not with fences, but with finely worded resolutions that keep Europe’s own powder keg dry.

It’s the Containment Doctrine reborn, but this time, the contagion is chaos, not Communism. During the Cold War, containment meant halting the spread of Soviet ideology through proxy wars and strengthening alliances. Today, it means bottling the political, demographic, and psychological spillover of Gaza. The refugee flows, the trauma, the potential for radicalisation, and the destabilisation of neighbouring regimes aren’t theoretical; they’re already leaking into Europe's security frameworks. Macron’s (unverified) asylum ruling may appear as a humanitarian gesture, but its real function is prophylactic: a carefully managed intake that conveys empathy while locking the gate behind it. It sends two messages simultaneously, one to the Arab world that France still listens, and one to the European far-right that France still controls. This isn’t generosity; it’s strategic insulation. It’s not about saving Palestinians. It’s about protecting Europe from the consequences of failing to do so.

And don’t mistake this for anti-Americanism. France and Britain aren’t "punishing" Trump out of emotion or ideology; they’re exploiting an opening. They’re stepping into the void he left, not with outrage, but with cold intent, calibrated diplomacy, and a memory longer than America’s age. Trump’s abandonment of multilateralism didn’t just hand them the stag,e it stripped the United States of the moral camouflage it once used to shield geopolitical ambition. Into that vacuum, Europe now moves, cloaked in humanitarian language, yet animated by something far older: imperial muscle memory. France and Britain don’t need to denounce the U.S. to upstage it. They need to move first with subtlety, precision, and just enough plausible virtue to make it look like leadership rather than conquest.

Israel, of course, sees betrayal, and in many ways, it's not wrong to feel cornered. Netanyahu has branded France’s recognition of Palestine a “reward for terror,” signalling a regime rattled by the erosion of unconditional support. But from the vantage point of Paris and London, this isn’t betrayal. It’s rectification. For decades, Israel operated under a blank cheque of Western indulgence, a tolerance for its excesses in the name of regional stability and shared security frameworks. That cheque, soaked in the blood of 59,000 Gazans, has finally bounced. Nearly two million displaced, hospitals flattened, journalists buried under rubble, and famine used as leverage, this is no longer a crisis that can be spun as self-defence. Recognition now becomes a recalibrated instrument of restraint, a pressure tactic disguised in principle. It isn’t revenge. It’s an overdue signal that Western protection comes with limits, and those limits have just been reached.

The more profound irony is that the U.S. once pleaded with Europe to "step up" and share the burden of global stability, only to recoil when Europe finally did, but on its terms. France and Britain are not merely stepping up; they’re redefining what leadership looks like without an American accent. The centre of moral gravity is shifting westward, but not toward Washington, toward capitals that remember what it means to wield influence without permission. And in that shift, Trump becomes less the villain than the void, a space through which older powers move, with more memory, more subtlety, and fewer illusions. This isn’t punishment. It’s succession.

So yes, it may look like a slap. But it’s not personal. It’s the architectural drafting of a new order. Recognition of Palestine isn’t the conclusion of diplomacy; it’s the scaffolding of a different global logic, one that no longer waits on U.S. initiative, nor fears its disapproval. It’s a message sent through maps rather than missiles that the balance of moral and strategic authorship is shifting. And in that blueprint, Europe isn’t seeking a seat at the table. It’s rearranging the chairs.

The old world has picked up its pen again, not to rubber-stamp another American-led framework, but to draft alternatives. Not to echo Washington’s voice, but to write its own, with the ink of history and the sharpness of restraint. This time, it sketches without consultation and redraws borders with a quiet confidence that doesn’t need clearance.