France joins western allies in calling for Israel to avoid escalation
France’s president Emmanuel Macron has said that France will do everything to avoid an escalation in the Middle East.
AFP reports:
Macron told the BFMTV news channel:
We will do everything to avoid a conflagration - that is to say an escalation.
We need to be by Israel’s side to ensure its protection to the maximum, but also to call for a limit to avoid an escalation.
The focus should be on “isolating Iran, convincing countries in the region that Iran is a danger, increasing sanctions, reinforcing pressure over nuclear activities” in Iran, he added.
The French president also said French jets helped repel an Iranian violation of Jordan’s airspace during the attack.
He said:
For several years now we have had an airbase in Jordan to fight terrorism.
Jordanian airspace was violated … We made our planes take off and we intercepted what we had to intercept.
French foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné on Sunday said he had asked the foreign ministry to summon the Iranian ambassador on Monday to express a “message of firmness”.
Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians on Monday in the occupied West Bank province of Nablus, Salah Bani Jaber, the mayor of Aqraba, told Reuters.
Israel has moved in a “significant way” but Hamas is the barrier to a deal that would see fighting in Gaza paused and hostages released, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. Hamas rejected the latest proposed deal and has said any new hostage deal must bring about an end to the Gaza war and withdrawal of all Israeli forces, Reuters reports.
A UN report said that Israel has destroyed over 3,000 buildings within a 1km “buffer zone” that it is creating inside the Gaza Strip along the territory’s border with Israel.
France’s president Emmanuel Macron has said that France will do everything to avoid an escalation in the Middle East. He told the BFMTV news channel: “We will do everything to avoid a conflagration - that is to say an escalation. “We need to be by Israel’s side to ensure its protection to the maximum, but also to call for a limit to avoid an escalation.”
The Netherlands said it will reopen its embassy in Tehran on Tuesday after closing it for two days for safety reasons. It added in the statement that it does not exclude a new closure of its embassy.
The IDF has said that four of its soldiers were wounded overnight near the UN-drawn blue line that separates Israel and Lebanon. In a statement it said the injuries were caused by “an explosion of an unknown source” and that “The soldiers were evacuated to a hospital to receive medical treatment.”
Portugal’s new prime minister told his Spanish counterpart on Monday his country will “not go as far” as Spain in its plan to recognise a Palestinian state without a concerted European Union approach.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez, who has visited several countries in the past few days on a diplomatic campaign to garner support for the initiative, reiterated his plan to recognise Palestinian statehood in the coming months.
But Luis Montenegro, who met Sanchez in Madrid, said that while Portugal will support a full U.N. membership for a Palestinian state in an upcoming General Assembly vote, it would wait for the EU to work out a common stance on the matter before moving forward.
“We don’t go as far as other governments... because we maintain that understanding must be built on a multilateral basis within the European Union and the United Nations,” Montenegro told reporters.
Both leaders called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza where death toll from Israel’s offensive to rout out Hamas has been mounting, prompting calls for a lasting solution for peace in the region. Both also condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel over the weekend.
Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians on Monday in the occupied West Bank province of Nablus, Salah Bani Jaber, the mayor of Aqraba, told Reuters.
“About 50 settlers, a large number of them armed, attacked the residents of Khirbet al-Tawil village east of Aqraba in the province of Nablus. They opened fire on the youth and this led to the death of two of the youth and the injury of others,” the mayor said.
Israel has moved in a “significant way” but Hamas is the barrier to a deal that would see fighting in Gaza paused and hostages released, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.
Hamas rejected the latest proposed deal and has said any new hostage deal must bring about an end to the Gaza war and withdrawal of all Israeli forces, Reuters reports.
“Israel moved a significant way in submitting that proposal. And there was a deal on the table that would achieve much of what Hamas claims it wants to achieve, and they have not taken that deal,” Miller told a press briefing.
The United States is still pursuing a deal that would allow for a ceasefire lasting at least six weeks and allow more aid into Gaza, Miller added.
Iran did not provide warnings to the US last week about its timeframe for launching an attack on Israel or its potential targets, the White House said.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the US did exchange messages with Iran but that there were never any messages regarding Iran’s timeframe or targets for its weekend attack, Reuters reports.
Israel will respond to Iran’s weekend missile and drone attack on its territory, the military chief of staff said on Monday.
“This launch of so many missiles, cruise missiles, and drones into Israeli territory will be met with a response,” chief of staff Herzi Halevi said, speaking from the Nevatim air force base in southern Israel, which sustained some damage in the attack.
Iran’s attack was a response to the killing of seven Iranian officers in a strike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus on April 1, Reuters reports.
Rishi Sunak has echoed calls by fellow world leaders for Israel to show restraint in its response to the weekend’s attack by Iran, as the international community seeks to prevent a full-scale regional conflict, writes Kiran Stacey and Patrick Wintour.
Updating the House of Commons for the first time since the weekend’s largely unsuccessful attack involving more than 300 drones and missiles, the prime minister told MPs he was urgently working with allies to try to prevent any escalation.
His statement followed similar calls by the US president, Joe Biden, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and came as Israeli ministers concluded a cabinet meeting to discuss retaliatory options, reportedly without agreement.
Sunak said he would plead directly for calm in a call with Benjamin Netanyahu, although sources said such a call was unlikely to happen on Monday.
Israel released 150 Palestinians detained during its military operations in Gaza back into the enclave on Monday and many have alleged they were abused during their time in captivity, Palestinian border officials said.
The detainees, including two members of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) who had been detained for 50 days, were released through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza on Monday, the border officials said.
Several were admitted to hospitals, complaining of abuse and ill-treatment inside Israeli jails, they said. The Israeli has military has denied the allegations.
“I went into jail with two legs and I returned with one leg,” Sufian Abu Salah, said from the hospital, adding that he had no medical history of chronic diseases.
“I had inflammations in my leg and they (the Israelis) refused to take me to hospital, a week later the inflammations spread and became gangrene. They took me to hospital where I had the surgery,” Abu Salah said, adding that he had been beaten by his Israeli captors.
A resident of Abassan town east of Khan Younis, Abu Salah, 42, told Reuters was arrested by Israel forces at the end of February from a school where he and his family had taken refuge.
The father of four, who said he had no medical history of illnesses before his arrest, said he had no idea where he had been held, but that “it looked like an army camp not a prison.”
The Israeli military said in a statement to Reuters it acts according to Israeli and international law and those it arrests get access to food, water, medication and proper clothing.
“The IDF is operating to restore security to the citizens of Israel, to bring home the hostages, and to achieve the objectives of the war while operating by international law,” the military told Reuters, adding that specific complaints of inappropriate behavior are forwarded to relevant authorities for review.
Israel’s war cabinet – Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister; Yoav Gallant, the defence minister; and Benny Gantz, a former defence minister and centrist Netanyahu rival – have spent the last two days deliberating how to respond to Iran’s first ever direct attack on the Jewish state. The salvo involved more than 300 missiles and drones, the majority of which were intercepted with the help of the US, UK, France and Jordan.
It is widely expected that Israel’s next steps will have to be calibrated along two axes: the country must take some sort of action to demonstrate to Iran that such an unprecedented show of force cannot pass without consequences, but at the same time must take into account Tehran’s threat that it will strike again “with greater force” if Israel retaliates. None of the options are without risk.
Will Israel respond?
While the destructiveness of the Iranian strikes could have been much worse, with just one casualty reported, a seven-year-old girl, a major red line has still been crossed from an Israeli security and deterrence standpoint. The important questions on a response are how and when: while statements from Gallant and Gantz have implied that a direct Israeli response to Tehran is not imminent, Netanyahu is yet to make a formal decision.
U.S. president Joe Biden has reiterated Washington’s commitment to Israeli security ahead of a meeting with Iraq’s prime minister, Reuters reports.
Iraqi prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, speaking alongside Biden, said their views may be divergent about what is happening in the region.
The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is at important juncture, Sudani said, adding that he would discuss moving from a military relationship to a full partnership.
Israeli forces killed a Palestinian teenager and wounded three other people during a military raid in the occupied West Bank on Monday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The killing of 17-year-old Yazan Ishtayeh brought to six the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or armed settlers since Friday, as Palestinian authorities reported increased settler rampages across the West Bank.
A spokesperson for Israel’s Border Police said that undercover border police troops, together with the Israeli army, launched an operation in the city of Nablus to arrest a suspect, Reuters reports.
During the activity, there was rioting in which one person threw an explosive device at the troops and was shot dead by the undercover unit, the spokesperson said.
The United States strongly condemns the killing of Israeli teenager Binyamin Achimair and is increasingly concerned by the violence against Palestinians and their property that ensued in the occupied West Bank after his death, the State Department said.
That violence resulted in the killing of two Palestinians, Jihad Abu Aliya, 25, and Omar Ahmad Abdulghani Hamed, 17, the department said in a statement.
“We strongly condemn these murders,” it added, Reuters reports.
“The violence must stop. Civilians are never legitimate targets. We call on the authorities to take measures to protect all communities from harm, and we urge Israel and the Palestinian Authority to do everything possible to de-escalate tensions,” the department added.
