A diplomatic solution is urgently needed to avert a third Lebanon war, French President Emmanuel Macron told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two spoke by phone on Tuesday night.
“The President of the Republic reiterated his extreme concern about the increase in tensions between Hezbollah and Israel along the Blue Line,” Macron’s office said.
An Israeli-Lebanese war “would harm both the interests of Lebanon and Israel and would constitute a particularly dangerous development for regional stability,” Marcon stressed to Netanyahu.
He offered to work alongside the United States to help Israel find a diplomatic resolution to the IDF-Hezbollah cross-border violence that has taken place for close to nine months, rendering it impossible for some 60,000 Israelis to live in their homes along that border.
France has a special relationship with Lebanon, given that the country was part of its empire between the two World Wars. It has worked to mitigate that threat from the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah that operates in that country, and which launches attacks against Israel.
Fear that Israel would enter southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah away from the border is so great, that some countries have urged their citizens to leave.
Netanyahu and Macron also discussed the flagging hostage deal and the Gaza war which was sparked by Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7.
Macron stresses the importance of a ceasefire
Macron spoke of the importance of a ceasefire that would be followed by the creation of a Palestinian state. It was important, he said, for a reformed Palestinian Authority to resume control of Gaza. It had lost control of the enclave in 2007 when Hamas ousted it in a bloody coup.
The French President told Netanyahu that he condemned Israel’s decision to authorize five West Bank outposts, transforming them into new legal settlements. Such a move, he said, undermined the two-state solution and the peace efforts.