Upon his election to the office of the presidency of France in 2017, Emmanuel Macron believed that, like his exemplar Charles de Gaulle, he was not just riding the wave of history, but that he was in fact mastering it.

Post-WWII leader Charles de Gaulle famously rallied France to the Palestinian people following the 1967 war, with Paris engaging with the Palestinian Liberation Organization for decades, even as terror attacks were committed in the group’s name on French soil.