Emmanuel Macron recognized the "State of Palestine" on behalf of France on Monday from the UN podium, attempting to increase pressure on Israel in favor of "peace," as part of a historic move that is still primarily symbolic.

"France recognizes today the State of Palestine," "for peace between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people," the French president solemnly declared to applause at the opening of the annual United Nations summit in New York, which will be dominated by the war in Gaza.

"We are here because the time has come. The time has come to free the 48 hostages held by Hamas. The time has come to stop the war, the bombings in Gaza, the massacres, and the fleeing populations. The time has come because the emergency is everywhere. The time for peace has come, because we are moments away from no longer being able to grasp it," he insisted.

Like Israel, which denounced this decision already formalized on Sunday by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Portugal and which was to be imitated by other countries on Monday at the UN, the United States criticized the recognition.

Donald Trump, a key ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "believes it is a reward for Hamas" to recognize the State of Palestine, his spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Monday.

Emmanuel Macron initiated a summit, co-chaired with Saudi Arabia, on the future of the two-state solution, the culmination of several months of intense diplomatic work to rally as many countries as possible and attempt to forge a peace plan.

It enabled the overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly to adopt a text supporting a future Palestinian state but unequivocally excluding the Islamist movement Hamas. This was a condition demanded by many Western countries.

This now brings to at least 146 out of 193 UN member states the number of countries that have taken this step, according to an AFP tally. This does not change the Palestinians' observer status at the UN, whose full membership has been blocked by the United States.

Several other countries are expected to join the movement on Monday, including Andorra, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco and San Marino, according to Emmanuel Macron.

Germany, for its part, does not see it happening in the short term. "The recognition of a Palestinian state is more likely to be at the end of the process. But such a process must begin now," declared German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul.

- "Erasure" of the Palestinians -

Italy is taking the same position, but tens of thousands of people demonstrated across the peninsula on Monday to "denounce the genocide in Gaza," during a day of mobilization, punctuated by clashes in Milan.

In France, the recognition was welcomed by nearly a hundred left-wing towns, which raised the Palestinian flag on the pediment of their town halls, despite the firm opposition of the Minister of the Interior.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is due to speak via video after being denied a visa by the United States, welcomed the new recognitions as "an important and necessary step towards achieving a just and lasting peace."

But some diplomats fear Israeli reprisals.

Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Sunday that there would be no Palestinian state and threatened to expand settlements in the West Bank, while two far-right Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, even called for the annexation of this occupied Palestinian territory.

But "we must not feel intimidated by the risk of reprisals, because whatever we do, these actions will continue," insisted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in an interview with AFP, referring to the war in Gaza and the "creeping annexation of the West Bank."

In this context, the Israeli Prime Minister's speech on Friday at the UN General Assembly is highly anticipated, as is that of Donald Trump on Tuesday.

For Max Rodenbeck of the International Crisis Group, any diplomatic effort to support Palestinian rights is "welcome," but without "concrete measures," such recognition risks "distracting from the reality, which is the accelerating erasure of Palestinian life in their homeland."

The October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians, according to official data.

According to the Hamas government's health ministry in Gaza, Israeli reprisals have claimed the lives of 65,062 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas seized power in 2007.