From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Netanyahu, Macron trade public barbs after phone call on Israel-Hezbollah conflict
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Emmanuel Macron trade public barbs after holding a phone call earlier today to discuss the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
“Mr. Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN,” Macron tells the weekly French cabinet meeting, referring to the resolution adopted in November 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly on the plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
“Therefore this is not the time to disregard the decisions of the UN,” he adds, as Israel wages a ground offensive against the Iran-backed Shiite terror group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where the UN peacekeepers are deployed.
Macron’s comments from the closed door meeting at the Elysee Palace are quoted by a participant who spoke to AFP and asked not to be named.
“A reminder to the president of France: It was not the UN resolution that established the State of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the War of Independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors – including from the Vichy regime in France,” reads a subsequent statement from Netanyahu’s office.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 states that only the Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping mission UNIFIL should be deployed in southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu on Sunday called on the UN to move the 10,000 strong peacekeeping force, who include 700 French troops, deployed in south Lebanon out of “harm’s way,” saying Hezbollah was using them as “human shields.”
In an earlier readout on their call, Netanyahu’s office said he told Macron that Israel is opposed to agreeing to a “unilateral ceasefire” in Lebanon.
“The prime minister said in the conversation that he is opposed to a unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon, and which will only return it to the way it was,” Netanyahu said, according to the statement.
Tensions have increased between Netanyahu and Macron with the French leader last week insisting that stopping the export of weapons used by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon was the only way to stop the conflicts.
