France will help the Palestinian Authority draft a constitution for a future state, President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday after talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Paris,
Reuters reports.
A number of major Western nations including France formally recognised a Palestinian state in September, a move driven by frustration with Israel over its devastating war in Gaza and a wish to promote a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
A U.S.-brokered, Israel-Hamas ceasefire took hold in October but Israel again rejected any prospect of Palestinian statehood.
Macron said France and the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, would set up a joint committee to work on drawing up a new Palestinian constitution.
"This committee will be responsible for working on all legal aspects: constitutional, institutional and organisational," he told reporters.
"It will contribute to the work of developing a new constitution, a draft of which President Abbas has presented to me, and will aim to finalise all the conditions for such a State of Palestine," Macron said.
He added France would contribute 100 million euros ($116.62 million) in humanitarian aid to Gaza for 2025.
Abbas said: "We are committed to a culture of dialogue and peace, and we want a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law, transparency, justice, pluralism and the rotation of power."
