France to help Palestinians draft state constitution
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France will help the Palestinian Authority draft a constitution for a future state, President Emmanuel Macron says after talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Paris.
Several countries including France and Australia formally recognised a Palestinian state in September, a move driven by frustration with Israel over its devastating war in the Gaza Strip and a wish to promote a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
A US-brokered Israel-Hamas ceasefire took hold in October but Israel again rejected any prospect of Palestinian statehood.
Macron said France and the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, would set up a joint committee to work on drawing up a new Palestinian constitution.
“This committee will be responsible for working on all legal aspects: constitutional, institutional and organisational,” he told reporters.
“It will contribute to the work of developing a new constitution, a draft of which President Abbas has presented to me, and will aim to finalise all the conditions for such a State of Palestine,” Macron said.
He added France would contribute 100 million euros ($A178 million) in humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip for 2025.
Abbas said: “We are committed to a culture of dialogue and peace, and we want a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law, transparency, justice, pluralism and the rotation of power.”
He said he valued efforts by US President Donald Trump and global partners to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip and bring about the next stage towards a durable peace with a disarming of militant groups including Hamas.
The move by France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to recognise a Palestinian state aligned them with more than 140 other countries also backing Palestinians’ aspiration to forge an independent homeland from Israeli-occupied territories.
Reuters
