PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron got a fair share of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s time on July 16. The two men participated in a ceremony marking 75 years since the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of French Jews during World War II. They then had a two-hour meeting at the Elysee Palace.

The parameters of the Netanyahu-Macron Elysee rendezvous resembled those of Macron’s July 5 meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas: a face-to-face meeting followed by declarations to the press. The media were there to record and publish only; no questions were allowed. The same was true with Netanyahu. Macron read his statement, Netanyahu said what he had to say. End of story.

Still, diplomatic sources describe a much longer meeting than originally scheduled, where Netanyahu spoke at length and Macron mostly listened. But from Macron’s responses, and also from his silence on some of the matters, there is a lot to learn.

Up until now, Macron’s stance on the resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was vague. Or, more precisely, generalized. He had reiterated several times France’s traditional positions in favor of a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security, and against settlement construction. At the same time, he was careful not to engage explicitly in the Paris 1 and Paris 2 Middle East Peace conferences, initiated by Macron’s predecessor Francois Hollande. Nor did he offer any new French initiative to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian talks. It seems that Macron prefers to wait and see in which direction the initiative introduced by US President Donald Trump progresses before jumping into the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire.