2023-10-24 13:03:44
It was after 18 days of conflict that Emmanuel Macron finally went to Israel. The French president arrived in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to express France’s solidarity following the Hamas attack on October 7. He met families of French or Franco-Israeli people killed, disappeared or held hostage in the Gaza Strip before holding a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The French head of state addressed various subjects of the international coalition to fight terrorism at the risk of a new front on the side of Iran… A brief recap of his declarations.
International Coalition Against Hamas
This is perhaps one of the most surprising statements from this press conference. Emmanuel Macron proposed that the international coalition currently deployed in Iraq and Syria to fight against the Islamic State “could also fight against Hamas”.
Solidarity with Israel
At the end of the bilateral meeting with Benyamin Netanyahu, the French head of state assured the Israeli population of France’s “solidarity” and “emotion”, estimating that with 30 French dead, the attack constituted “a black page in our own history”. The French president said he wanted to “share the distress” of the families of French victims and repeated that the priority was to “free all the hostages” during this press conference in the company of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Fight “without mercy but not without rules”
The President of the Republic reiterated France’s position and recalled Israel’s “legitimate right to defend itself”. “The fight against Hamas must be merciless but not without rules,” he then qualified. “Democracies respect the laws of war and humanitarian access. Democracies do not target civilians,” the French leader further clarified, while the latest Hamas report shows more than 5,000 deaths in Gaza since October 7.
Political process with the Palestinians
The French president also called “for a decisive relaunch of the political process with the Palestinians” and will discuss it in Ramallah with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and on Wednesday with several leaders of the region. “The Palestinian cause must be heard with reason […]. I will be tomorrow with several leaders of the region to also very concretely move forward on the agenda that we have set for ourselves,” he declared.
The risk of a new front
Concern about the opening of a new front with Iran hovers around the war between Hamas and Israel. This is why Emmanuel Macron also called on “Hezbollah, the Iranian regime, the Houthis in Yemen” to “not take the reckless risk of opening new fronts”, while the situation is very tense on the border with the Lebanon.
Emmanuel Macron thus declared that he feared “a regional conflagration from which everyone would lose.” He also called “everyone’s attention to the actions of a few against Palestinian civilians whose violence threatens to spread fire to the West Bank as well.”
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