'A hardening of Jordan's position' on Israel as Macron visits
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00:00 We can now bring in our international affairs editor, Philip Turrell.
00:03 Philip, great to see you.
00:04 As you saw there in that report from Lisa, Emmanuel Macron will be facing a tough crowd
00:09 in Jordan.
00:11 Just a couple of days ago, we had Jordan's King Abdullah speak at the Cairo Peace Summit,
00:16 and he said the message the Arab world is hearing is loud and clear.
00:19 He said, "Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones.
00:23 Our lives matter less than other lives.
00:25 The application of international law is optional, and human rights have boundaries.
00:29 They stop at borders, they stop at races, and they stop at religions."
00:34 You're seeing a certain hardening of the position of the Jordanian monarch in the face of what
00:41 is happening in Gaza.
00:43 There's always been some kind of working relationship between Jordan and Israel when it came to
00:49 many bilateral issues.
00:52 But we're seeing, as a result of the war in Ukraine, and of course because of the strikes
00:56 in Gaza, a hardening of that position.
01:00 And I think also growing impatience and scepticism with the positions taken by the United States
01:07 and other Western leaders who've come to Israel, notably the German Chancellor, the Dutch Prime
01:12 Minister, the British Prime Minister, the Italian Prime Minister, all coming to offer
01:18 their support to-
01:19 European Commission President.
01:20 The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, all coming to offer their support
01:23 to the Israeli Prime Minister and the Israeli people.
01:29 And there's a lot of difficulty in trying to understand why there is no support also
01:34 for the Palestinians on the same level.
01:38 And I think what Emmanuel Macron is trying to do here is try to show that France wants
01:45 this to end peacefully.
01:46 That's why he's put forward this idea of this coalition against Hamas.
01:51 The problem is that although Hamas is seen as a terrorist organization by the European
01:55 Union, by the United States, by Israel, of course, by Australia, by the United Kingdom,
02:00 it's not seen as a terrorist organization by many in the region who see it as a resistance
02:04 group, fighting for the Palestinian cause for the end of the occupation of the West
02:10 Bank and Gaza by the Israelis since 1967.
02:14 So they will never agree to sign up to any kind of coalition that is going to designate
02:19 Hamas as being a terrorist organization.
02:20 So that's all the problem that Emmanuel Macron is facing.
02:24 And the second problem Emmanuel Macron is facing is he's got to come back with something
02:28 to show from this trip.
02:29 He can't come back empty-handed.
02:32 And that is something that is very difficult for him to be able to imagine getting for
02:39 the moment, unless something, there is a breakthrough today in Jordan.