Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the decision “rewards terror” and posed an existential threat, providing a “launch pad to annihilate” Israel.
“Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel,” he added.
Foreign minister Gideon Saar was equally scathing, claiming that “a Palestinian state will be a Hamas state”, referring to the Palestinian militants that attacked Israel in 2023, triggering the war in Gaza.
Deputy prime minister Yariv Levin, who is also justice minister, called the decision “direct aid to terrorism” and “a black mark on the history of France”.
Defence minister Israel Katz vowed that Israel will “not allow the establishment of a Palestinian entity that would harm our security”.
Firebrand finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said France’s announcement “gives Israel one more reason” to annex the West Bank it has occupied since 1967 and “put an end once and for all to the dangerous illusion of a terrorist Palestinian state”.
On Wednesday, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, backed a non-binding decision urging the government to impose Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, thereby annexing the territory – a long-standing demand of the Israeli far right.
Opposition figures also criticised Macron’s decision in harsh tones.
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who is expected to run against Netanyahu in the 2026 elections, wrote on X that Macron’s move is a sign of “moral collapse” and “will be tossed into the dustbin of history.”
“Recognising a Palestinian state is a reward for terrorism and encouragement for Hamas – an organisation that carried out the most horrific massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” opposition lawmaker Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the nationalist party Yisrael Beitenu, wrote on X.
Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister of diaspora and combating antisemitism, posted footage that went viral online of Macron apparently being shoved in the face by his wife Brigitte.
“President @EmmanuelMacron, On behalf of the Government of Israel, here is our response to your recognition of a Palestinian state,” he wrote on X.