The Minister of Foreign Affairs intends to “carry the voice of France” to the Middle East where “the war has lasted far too long”.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, will go on Wednesday evening “to Israel and the Palestinian territories to meet the authorities” and “humanitarian actors”, he announced this Tuesday, November 5 on France 2 .
It will be a question of “carrying the voice of France in this region where the war has lasted far too long and where the use of force must now give way to the use of dialogue and diplomacy”, he explained, while Paris is pushing, without success, for a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza.
This visit also comes at a time when skirmishes are piling up between President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The latest one? Implicit criticisms from the first towards the second during a conference for Lebanon, Thursday October 24. “I am not sure that we defend a civilization by sowing barbarism ourselves,” declared the Head of State on this occasion.
“We will continue peace discussions”
However, “the dialogue has never been broken and the President of the Republic has met with the Israeli Prime Minister on numerous occasions”, underlined Jean-Noël Barrot, without specifying whether he would meet the latter during his trip.
As for France's position, “we will continue the peace discussions initiated a month ago under the aegis of the United States and France, to formulate the conditions for a just and lasting peace”, indicated Jean-Noël Barrot, even if Benjamin Netayanhu refused the proposal for a truce in the fighting led in Lebanon against Hezbollah by Israel.
Jean-Noël Barrot also spoke about the match between Israel and France organized on November 14 at the Stade de France, after pro-Palestinian activists entered the premises of the French Football Federation on Monday to protest against the organization of this meeting.
“Stop importing this conflict” into France
“We must stop importing this conflict into the public debate in France. Last week, Sciences Po Strasbourg ended, in an unacceptable manner, a collaboration with an Israeli university. Today, it is sport”, lamented the Minister of Foreign Affairs, adding: “War has nothing to do with these matters.”
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after its attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, including hostages killed or died in captivity. Of 251 people kidnapped, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.
The Israeli offensive launched in retaliation in Gaza left 43,374 dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by the UN. The vast majority of the inhabitants of the small besieged territory have been displaced.
In the aftermath of the war in Gaza, pro-Iranian Hezbollah, in support of its Palestinian ally, opened a front against Israel, triggering nearly a year of exchanges of fire which ultimately turned into open war.
More precisely, the Israeli army launched a massive bombing campaign on September 23 against Hezbollah, saying it wanted to push its fighters back around thirty km from the border, to allow the return of some 60,000 inhabitants of northern Israel displaced by its shots. The movement, however, continues these attacks, and said on Monday that it had launched a salvo of rockets on Safed.
At least 1,940 people have been killed since September 23 in Lebanon, according to an AFP count based on official data.
