Gallant says Israel won’t join Macron’s trilateral task force to defuse Hezbollah tensions

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant rules out joining an initiative promoted by French President Emmanuel Macron in which France, the United States and Israel would form a contact group to work on defusing escalating tensions with Hezbollah on the northern border.

“As we fight a just war, defending our people, France has adopted hostile policies against Israel,” Gallant says in a statement. “In doing so, France ignores the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli children, women and men.”

“Israel will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France,” he writes.

His statement comes after Macron yesterday announced that the three countries had agreed to work together to step up efforts to push forward a roadmap presented by Paris earlier this year to de-escalate the conflict, which has been building since Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel.

Amid growing calls to limit arms sales to the IDF and divest from Israeli defense companies on the backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza, French authorities last month banned Israeli defense firms from exhibiting at one of the world’s largest defense fairs.

That decision came days after an Israeli strike targeting two top Hamas terrorists in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah sparked a fire in a complex housing displaced Palestinians, killing dozens of civilians and triggering international outrage and protests in France.