French President Emmanuel Macron used his address to the United Nations this month to make a claim about Hamas that, by the account of one American Thinker commentator, collapses under the weight of the group’s own statements. As James Zumwalt writes in the outlet, Macron told the assembly that “Hamas has never operated in the West Bank.” Zumwalt’s response is blunt: the assertion is so far removed from the record that even Hamas’s own members would struggle not to laugh.
The geography Macron’s remark seems to gloss over is central to the argument. Palestine comprises two separate territories. Gaza runs along the Mediterranean on Israel’s western border, while the West Bank is the larger of the two, sitting against Jordan on Israel’s eastern edge. At their closest point, roughly 21 miles of Israeli territory separates them. Zumwalt’s contention is that treating that distance as a firewall against Hamas activity in the West Bank misreads both the group’s history and its reach.
A History That Predates the Separation
Hamas emerged in Gaza in 1987 and, after a stunning victory in 2006 elections, used violence to take control from its rival Fatah. Since then, in what Zumwalt describes as a one-party mindset, the group has held no further elections in Gaza. It is also known to operate beyond the strip, with a presence in Lebanon, Qatar and other locations.
The West Bank, meanwhile, is governed by a combination of the Palestinian Authority β where Fatah is the dominant faction β and Israel. Established in 1994, the PA controls roughly 39% of the territory, with Israel administering the rest. Israel captured the West Bank, which it calls Judea and Samaria, in the 1967 Mideast war and began settling it soon after. An estimated half-million Jews now live there. Like Hamas in Gaza, the PA has avoided holding elections in the West Bank β driven, in Zumwalt’s telling, by fear of Hamas’s influence.
Hamas activity in the territory, according to the commentary, stretches back to at least 2001, when operatives from the West Bank carried out the bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria. Fifteen people were killed, with a sixteenth dying in 2023 after never emerging from a 22-year coma. Numerous attacks on Israeli targets followed, some of which Hamas itself acknowledged.
Arrests, Cells and Claimed Attacks
Zumwalt points to 2021, when Israel’s Shin Bet secret service uncovered a Hamas network spanning Ramallah, Jenin and Hebron. More than 50 operatives were arrested after stockpiling weapons and bomb-making materials. The network, he writes, was funded by senior Hamas leadership that included the former head of the group’s West Bank operations. In the northern West Bank, so-called battalions are known to cooperate with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which regularly engages Israeli Defense Forces with explosive devices and automatic weapons.
More recent episodes figure prominently in the piece. In June 2023, four Israeli citizens were killed at a hummus restaurant near the settlement of Eli. Hamas boasted that the two shooters were official members of its military wing in the West Bank. The group also claimed responsibility for a shooting the following month that killed an IDF soldier near the settlement of Kedumim.
In August 2024, Hamas’s military wing issued a formal claim of responsibility for a drive-by shooting that killed 23-year-old Israeli civilian Yonatan Deutsch. According to the commentary, the cell behind the attack, operating out of Jenin, was later identified and eliminated by the Shin Bet β an outcome Zumwalt frames as a reminder that claiming credit can carry consequences. That same month, Hamas also took responsibility for the coordinated detonation of two car bombs in the West Bank, which wounded three Israelis.
The list, Zumwalt writes, goes on β which is what makes Macron’s UN statement, in his view, so difficult to credit.
What the PA’s Cooperation Suggests
One detail the commentary treats as telling: it is Hamas’s activity in the West Bank that has motivated the PA to work voluntarily with Israel on security matters, lest it find itself a target too. Support for Hamas does exist among West Bank Palestinians, Zumwalt notes, though cooperation with the group there has been limited β nowhere near the level seen in Gaza, where, he writes, terrorists force Palestinians to participate. He also cites polling showing that a vast majority of Palestinians supported the October 7, 2023 surprise Hamas raid into Israel, which killed 1,200 Israelis.
Beyond the operational record, Zumwalt argues that Macron’s statement ignores the Hamas charter’s explicit call for Israel’s destruction and the creation of an Islamic state in its place. A group that assigns itself such a mandate, he writes, will use whatever asset it can reach to pursue it.
Why the Hostin Comparison
The commentary opens by invoking Sunny Hostin of The View, who recently drew attention for a claim that facts do not support β that as a jury member in a 1991 high-profile trial she was the lone holdout blocking a guilty verdict. Zumwalt notes it is not the first time Hostin has made an untrue claim. The connection, he explains, is that The View has a reputation for hosts with shaky command of facts β which, in his satirical framing, is good news for Macron.
Macron is serving his second five-year term and cannot run for a third. He steps down on May 14, 2027, at which point he will be just 49 and, Zumwalt assumes, in the market for post-presidential work. A seat on The View’s panel, he concludes, would suit him ideally β because his UN comments on Hamas have already demonstrated the qualification.
Whether or not one accepts the tongue-in-cheek career advice, the underlying charge is serious: that a sitting head of state, before the world’s premier diplomatic forum, described Hamas’s footprint in the West Bank in terms that the group’s own statements of responsibility appear to contradict.
Source: www.americanthinker.com β https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/french-president-macron-shows-his-sunny-side/