France calls on the EU to pressure Israel to come to the table on Palestinian two-state solution

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — France on Monday called on the European Union to pressure Israel to agree to a two-state solution with the Palestinians, the latest escalation from the French as they seek an end to the deadly Gaza war days after pledging to recognize Palestine as a state.

Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, told reporters at the United Nations that while there is international consensus that the time for a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now, world powers need to back up their words with actions.

“The European Commission, on behalf of the EU, has to express its expectations and show the means that we can incentivize the Israeli government to hear this appeal,” he said.

Barrot spoke on the first day of a high-level U.N. meeting on a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is being co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.

The conference, which was postponed from June and downgraded to the ministerial level, is taking place in New York as international condemnation of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza reaches a fever pitch. Both Israel and its closest ally, the United States, refused to participate in the meeting, which Barrot said is being attended by representatives of 125 countries, including 50 ministers.

The aim of the conference, Barrot said, is “to reverse the trend of what is happening in the region — mainly the erasure of the two-state solution, which has been for a long time the only solution that can bring peace and security in the region.”

He urged the European Commission to call on Israel to lift a financial blockade on 2 billion euros he says the Israeli government owes the Palestinian Authority, stop settlement building in the West Bank, which threatens the territorial integrity of a future Palestinian state, and end the “militarized” food delivery system in Gaza by the Israeli-backed U.S. Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has resulted in hundreds of killings.

Dubravka Šuica, the European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, told the meeting the EU is examining new sanctions and said it’s “imperative” that Israel transfer money owed to the Palestinians, and allow the delivery of food and other aid to Gaza.

She said the EU has been a long-term partner promoting reforms of the Palestinian Authority and welcomed the recent announcement of presidential and general elections within a year across the Palestinian territories. “We are keeping the Palestinian Authority from financial collapse,” she said, underscoring that the EU is supporting it with 161.6 billion euros for the next three years.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the two-state solution on both nationalistic and security grounds. The U.S. has echoed that sentiment and on Monday called the conference “unproductive and ill-timed.”

“The United States will not participate in this insult but will continue to lead real-world efforts to end the fighting and deliver a permanent peace,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement. “Our focus remains on serious diplomacy: not stage-managed conferences designed to manufacture the appearance of relevance.”

Ahead of the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognize Palestine as a state at the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in September. The bold but mostly symbolic move is aimed at adding diplomatic pressure on Israel.

France is now the biggest Western power and the only member of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations to recognize the state of Palestine, and the move could pave the way for other countries to do the same. More than 140 countries recognize a Palestinian state, including more than a dozen in Europe.

At the conference opening, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa called for all countries that have not yet recognized Palestine as a state to do so “without delay.”

“The path to peace begins by recognizing the state of Palestine and preserving it from destruction,” he said.

The other issue being discussed at the conference is normalization between Israel and the Arab states in the region. Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, stressed that normalization of relations with Israel “can only come through the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

With global anger rising over desperately hungry people in Gaza starting to die from starvation, U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday called for increasing aid to Palestinians, a rare glimpse of daylight between him and Netanyahu, who has said there is no starvation.

Both Barrot and Farhan said Monday that the U.S. is an essential actor in the region and that it was the American president in January who secured the only ceasefire in the 21-month war.

“I am firmly in the belief that Trump’s engagement can be a catalyst for an end to the immediate crisis in Gaza and potentially a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the long term,” Farhan said.

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, left, and Saudi Arabia Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud chair the United Nations General Assembly, Monday, July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Palestine Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa addresses the United Nations General Assembly, Monday, July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The United States delegation seat is unoccupied in the United Nations General Assembly, Monday, July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot addresses the United Nations General Assembly, Monday, July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Palestine Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa, foreground, arrives to address the United Nations General Assembly, Monday, July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and top Iranian officials exchanged dueling threats Friday as widening protests swept across parts of the Islamic Republic, further escalating tensions between the countries after America bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June.

At least eight people have been killed so far in violence surrounding the demonstrations, which were sparked in part by the collapse of Iran’s rial currency but have increasingly seen crowds chanting anti-government slogans.

The protests, now in their sixth day, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the protests have yet to be as widespread and intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.

Trump initially wrote on his Truth Social platform, warning Iran that if it “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”

“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote, without elaborating.

Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the demonstrations. He offered no evidence to support the allegation, which Iranian officials have repeatedly made during years of protests sweeping the country.

“Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” Larijani wrote on X, which the Iranian government blocks. “The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers.”

Larijani’s remarks likely referenced America’s wide military footprint in the region. Iran in June attacked Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar after the U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites during Israel's 12-day war on the Islamic Republic. No one was injured, though a missile did hit a structure there.

As of Friday, no major changes had been made to U.S. troop levels in the Middle East or their preparations following Trump’s social media posts, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.

In a letter late Friday to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the U.N. Security Council, Iran's envoy asked the world body to condemn the rhetoric and reaffirm the country's "inherent right to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national security, and to protect its people against any foreign interference.”

“The United States of America bears full responsibility for any consequences arising from these unlawful threats and any ensuing escalation," said Amir Saeid Iravani, Iranian ambassador to the U.N.

Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who previously was the council’s secretary for years, separately warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”

Trump's online message marked a direct sign of support for the demonstrators, something other American presidents have avoided out of concern that activists would be accused of working with the West. During Iran's 2009 Green Movement demonstrations, President Barack Obama held back from publicly backing the protests — something he said in 2022 “was a mistake.”

But such White House support still carries a risk.

“Though the grievances that fuel these and past protests are due to the Iranian government’s own policies, they are likely to use President Trump’s statement as proof that the unrest is driven by external actors,” said Naysan Rafati, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“But using that as a justification to crack down more violently risks inviting the very U.S. involvement Trump has hinted at,” he added.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei recently cited a list of Tehran’s longtime grievances regarding U.S. intervention, including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, the downing of a passenger jet in 1988 and the strikes in June.

Protests continued Friday in various cities in the country, even as life largely continued unaffected in the capital, Tehran. Demonstrations have reached over 100 locations in 22 of Iran's 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported. It said the death toll in the demonstrations rose to eight with the death of a demonstrator in Marvdasht in Iran's Fars province.

Demonstrators took to the streets in Zahedan in Iran's restive Sistan and Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan. The burials of several demonstrators killed in the protests also took place Friday, sparking marches.

Videos purported to show mourners chasing off security force members who attended the funeral of 21-year-old Amirhessam Khodayari. He was killed Wednesday in Kouhdasht, over 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Tehran in Iran's Lorestan province.

Footage also showed Khodayari's father denying his son served in the all-volunteer Basij force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as authorities claimed. The semiofficial Fars news agency later reported that there were now questions about the government's claims that he served.

Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.

The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. Tehran has had little luck in propping up its economy in the months since the June war.

Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.

Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.

A woman shows a portrait of the late commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, on her smartphone during a ceremony commemorating his death anniversary at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People wave Iranian flags as one of them holds up a poster of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, during a ceremony commemorating his death anniversary at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

This combo shows President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. and Iranian Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Bilal Hussein)