Macron adviser says Oct. 7 ‘wouldn’t have happened’ had there been a Palestinian state

Defending Paris’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state, an adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron blames Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, on the lack of a Palestinian state.

“Everyone for 40 years has been talking about the two-state solution,” says Ofer Bronchtein, Macron’s longtime special adviser on Israeli-Palestinian affairs, in a Hebrew-language radio interview with Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.

“It angers me that people say we encourage terror,” he says, noting that the Hamas attack happened even without a Palestinian state, and adding: “Perhaps because there was no Palestinian state, October 7 happened.”

“Had there been Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza on October 7 [2023]… October 7 wouldn’t have happened. Sovereignty is responsibility,” he says.