France is enhancing security around Jewish-, Israeli- and American-affiliated sites across the country in the wake of the Israeli-Iranian war, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said in an order issued on Saturday.
“Special vigilance” must be extended “to all sites that could be targeted by terrorist or malicious acts by a foreign power,” Retailleau told regional security chiefs in a dispatch seen by AFP.
The minister mentioned “places of worship, schools, state and institutional buildings, sites with high traffic,” including “festive, cultural or religious gatherings,” as sites to safeguard with heightened security.
France is home to the third-largest Jewish community in the world, after Israel and the United States.
Last week, France signaled a retreat from recognizing a Palestinian state via an international conference that was Paris’s brainchild, The Guardian reported.
Scheduled for June 16-18 at United Nations headquarters in New York, the conference will now focus on determining steps toward recognition rather than recognition itself.
French President Emmanuel Macron said recognizing “Palestine” “was not only a moral duty but a political necessity,” speaking during a press conference in Singapore on May 30.
Also in May, France’s foreign minister warned that the European Union may suspend its association agreement with Israel over the war against Hamas in Gaza, adding that Paris is “determined” to recognize a Palestinian state.
Jean-Noël Barrot said France supports a Dutch-led initiative to review the E.U.-Israel cooperation accord, citing possible violations of the agreement’s human rights clauses. The deal underpins political and economic ties between the bloc and Israel.
In an escalation of rhetoric against the Jewish state, Macron on June 5 signaled that France may soon toughen its stance on Israel, citing ongoing concerns over the war in Gaza.
Speaking alongside Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at the Élysée Palace, Macron said France would decide “in the coming days” whether to escalate its response and implement “concrete measures” against Israel.
The comments come amid rising diplomatic tensions between France and Israel. Macron’s increasingly vocal criticism of Israel’s military operations has drawn strong rebuke from Jerusalem, which accuses the French president of siding with Hamas and spreading falsehoods about humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
