The announcement by President Emmanuel Macron of his intention to recognise Palestinian statehood puts huge pressure on Sir Keir Starmer to follow suit.
The French have been itching to take this step for some time.
They were planning to make an announcement some weeks ago but were forced to delay after Israel and the US attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Crucially, France is not recognising a Palestinian state now – it will do so, says Macron, at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
What the French hope is that their announcement will in the meantime generate diplomatic momentum and encourage other nations to join them.
The French president likes to make bold, dramatic plays on the international stage. But it is a gamble.
In particular, he is relying on the UK to follow his lead. When Macron visited Parliament a few weeks ago, he told MPs and peers that “working together to recognise the state of Palestine and to initiate this political moment is the only path to peace”.
One senior French diplomat told me a few days ago that if the UK acted together with France it would convince other countries to join “because two parent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) shows we mean business”. The US, China and Russia are the other permanent members on the UNSC, with ten other countries elected for two-year terms.
They added: “The best contribution that France and the UK can bring is to restart the process by bringing all stakeholders around the table, making commitments to the state of Palestine and the security of Israel. We have this power, this opportunity together to restart this process.”
The problem is that the British prime minister has thus far been reluctant to take this step in recognising a Palestinian state.
That, in part, reflects traditional British policy. The UK has long argued that the act of recognising a Palestinian state should not be wasted on what some see as gesture politics. One senior source questioned what impact the French decision would have apart from making Macron feel better.
Instead, officials argue this diplomatic card should be used productively to drive momentum in a long-term political settlement; a lever with which to get a deal over the line.
In other words, recognition was part of the end game. Such is the sensitivity about this issue that David Cameron, as foreign secretary, ruffled feathers last year when he even suggested recognition could be brought forward as part of a process and not the final move.
But the French decision suggests they now believe recognition should not be even a stage in a diplomatic sequence but a trigger to open it all up, a shock to the status quo demanded by continued Israeli intransigence and the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The UK has also been cautious traditionally about recognising a Palestinian state for fear of upsetting its allies, the US and Israel, which are firmly opposed to such an idea, believing it to be, in their view, a reward for terrorism. The UK has also been reluctant to invest too much support in an unreformed Palestinian Authority.
So for now the UK has been stalling for time. On Thursday night, the prime minister issued a statement saying: “We are clear that statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people. A ceasefire will put us on a path to the recognition of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution which guarantees peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”
In other words, there has to be at the very least a ceasefire before recognition becomes possible.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy told MPs on the International Development committee last week that recognition had to be part of a process towards secure a two-state solution – a political settlement based on two separate states that protect the rights of Palestinians and the security of Israelis.
“No country has a veto on our decisions,” he said. “When and how to recognise is our decision. I am simply making the point that the act of recognition does not get you two states; it is a symbolic act.”
The problem is that, according to UK officials, this decision has moved from the diplomatic sphere to the political. In other words, the government is now under huge pressure from its MPs to act.
Whenever ministers defend the status quo in the House of Commons, they are assailed on all sides by MPs calling for recognition. Joint letters to Downing Street are being written by retired diplomats and coalitions of MPs. The Foreign Affairs Committee has also issued a report backing recognition.
Even Cabinet ministers are joining in. Earlier this week, Health Secretary Wes Streeting told MPs he hoped that the international community would “recognise the state of Palestine while there is a state of Palestine left to recognise”. That raised eyebrows in Whitehall because the formulation strayed firmly outside the official Cabinet position that recognition should come only “at the point of maximum impact”.
So all eyes are now on what the British government decides. If it fails to follow the French lead, it may well risk votes and rebellions in Parliament. One official suggested to me this could well follow welfare reform as the next big issue to trigger a Labour backbench revolt.
The risk is that, alternately, Britain follows France begrudgingly and is dragged into recognition without any significant diplomatic gain. It will have played a one-time card to little avail.
More than 140 countries around the world have already recognised Palestine as a state. Last year, Ireland, Spain, Norway and Slovenia joined them, with minimal impact.
Future political declarations about Palestinian statehood may well be significant. But how much they change the reality in the short term for people on the ground in Gaza is an open question.