LIVE – Middle East: “Benyamin Netanyahu must not forget that Israel was created by a UN decision”, reprimands Emmanuel Macron

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must not “free himself from UN decisions”, warned Emmanuel Macron according to participants in the Council of Ministers, recalling that it was a UN resolution which “created” the State of Israel, while Israel is leading a ground offensive against the pro-Iranian movement Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where peacekeepers are deployed.

“Mr. Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN,” said the head of state, referring to the vote in November 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly on the plan of partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

The time for diplomacy is “past,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, calling for a move to “sanctions” against Israel. “We have gone beyond the limit of words, of diplomacy, of politics, we have reached the end. We need other instruments. We must move on to sanctions, to the boycott of Israel,” declared the minister during a conference on “the future of Palestine” in Ankara.

The number two of Lebanese Hezbollah, Naïm Qassem, addressed the Israelis on Tuesday, telling them that “the solution” to end the war was “a ceasefire” threatening, otherwise, to strike “everywhere” in Israel and assuring that its movement would “not be defeated”.

Mr. Qassem, who only speaks in speeches broadcast by the pro-Iranian party’s channel, announced a “new equation” with the attack carried out on Sunday on a military base south of Haifa, the most murder of Hezbollah on Israeli soil in almost a month. Mr. Qassem has been the de facto leader of the formation since its secretary general Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated by Israel on September 27.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced that she would travel to Lebanon, where Italian troops are involved in the UN peacekeeping mission (UNIFIL), which has come under fire from the Israeli army . “It is already planned that I will go to Lebanon,” she declared in the Senate, without specifying the date of this visit.

Lebanese Hezbollah says it fired “a salvo of rockets” at Haifa in northern Israel, two days after one of its drones killed four soldiers at a military base south of the major northern Israeli city .

Sunday’s attack was the deadliest by the pro-Iranian movement on Israeli soil in nearly a month of military escalation. The pro-Iranian formation now claims to be engaged in “close combat” with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. Israel, for its part, has intensified its aerial bombardments on Lebanon.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati told AFP that the government had taken reinforced security measures at Beirut international airport to “remove any pretext” for Israel to target it. “Reinforced security measures have been in place for a week at the airport”, in the immediate vicinity of the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, he added. At the end of September, the Israeli army accused Iran of seeking to send weapons to Hezbollah, its ally, via Beirut airport, and asserted that it would thwart these attempts.

In a statement to AFP, the Lebanese Prime Minister also said he was ready to increase the number of troops in the South in the event of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. “We currently have 4,500 soldiers in the South and we want to increase to between 7,000 and 11,000,” said Najib Mikati. While the Israeli army says it has been carrying out ground incursions into Lebanon since September 30, the Prime Minister affirmed that “there are advances and retreats, (Israeli soldiers) enter and leave” Lebanese territory.

Lebanese Hezbollah claims to have fired rockets on “the suburbs of Tel Aviv” on Monday. Warning sirens had sounded “because of projectiles fired from Lebanon”, according to the Israeli army, which said it had “intercepted all aerial threats”.

The shooting came the day after a Hezbollah drone strike killed four soldiers on a military base south of Haifa, the pro-Iran movement’s deadliest attack on Israeli soil in nearly a month. military escalation.

Lebanese Hezbollah claims to have shot down “an Israeli drone of the Hermes 450 type” during the night, without however specifying whether this happened on Lebanese or Israeli soil.

The World Food Program (WFP) and Unicef ​​on Tuesday called for “more funds” because “needs are increasing” in Lebanon, where the war between Hezbollah and Israel has displaced several hundred thousand people. “We call on the international community to support the efforts and help keep the terminals and supply routes open,” indicate these UN agencies in a joint statement, while Israel bombed the road linking Lebanon to Syria, hindering the passage of refugees.

Also, the UN called for a “rapid, independent and thorough” investigation into the Israeli strike which left 22 dead on Monday in northern Lebanon, said a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. ‘man.

Israel will take the United States’ opinion into consideration but will determine its response to the Iranian attack based on its “national interest”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement from his office on Tuesday. “We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest,” he said.

Iranian commander Esmaïl Qaani reappeared in public on Tuesday during the funeral in Tehran of General Abbas Nilforoushan, killed last month alongside Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to live images from state television.

General Qaani, who heads the Quds Force, the external operations branch of the Revolutionary Guards, had disappeared from the public scene and some media had claimed that he had been the target of an Israeli strike in Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his American ally to consider striking the Iranian army, and not Iran’s oil or nuclear infrastructure, in retaliation for Tehran’s firing of some 200 missiles at Israel on October 1, affirmed the Washington Post on Monday.

The Israeli Defense Minister promised a “deadly, precise and surprising” attack against Iran after this second such operation in less than six months.

Welcome to this live dedicated to the situation in the Middle East.