“Nails” are exchanged for Benjamin Netanyahu and Emmanuel Macron, following a phone call earlier today to discuss the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
“Mr. Netanyahu must not forget what your country was created by a UN decision“, he said Macron at the weekly meeting of the French cabinet, referring to the resolution adopted in November 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly on the plan to divide Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.
“Therefore, this is not the time to ignore UN decisions,” added the French president.
Macron’s comments of the closed-door meeting at the Élysée Palace listed by a participant who spoke to AFP and asked not to be identified.
“A reminder to the President of France: It was not the United Nations resolution who founded the State of Israel, but the victory achieved in the War of Independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors – including those of the Vichy regime in France,” a later statement by Netanyahu’s office.
THE UN Security Council Resolution 1701 stipulates that only the Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, should be deployed to southern Lebanon.
Recall that Netanyahu on Sunday appealed to the UN to withdraw the 10,000-strong peacekeeping force, which includes 700 French soldiers, deployed in southern Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah is using them as “human shields”.
Previously, Netanyahu’s office reported that the Israeli prime minister told Macron that Israel opposes the deal in a “unilateral ceasefire» in Lebanon.
“The prime minister said in the conversation that he is against a unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon and would return it to the way it was,” Netanyahu said, according to the statement.
Tensions have risen between Netanyahu and Macron, with the French leader insisting last week that ending the export of weapons used by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon was the only way to end the fighting.
Source: Times of Israel