French President Emmanuel Macron said it is vital that the two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran also extends to Israel’s strikes against Lebanon.
“The situation is critical” in Lebanon, Macron warned Wednesday ahead of a meeting of the French defense council. “What we have witnessed with Israel’s strikes and occupation of southern Lebanon isn’t the right response,” he said.
Israel has repeatedly struck Lebanon after an attack by the Iranian-affiliated Hezbollah group in March. The Israeli offensive has killed more than 1,500 people, according to Lebanese authorities.
The Israeli defense minister said in late March that Israel would remain in southern Lebanon — a region it illegally occupied from 1982 to 2000 — even after the current conflict ends.
Macron has repeatedly condemned attacks against Lebanon, one of France’s closest allies in the Middle East, and urged the Israeli government to start talks with its Lebanese counterparts.
France has also accused Israeli soldiers of seeking to “intimidate” French military forces taking part in a United Nations peacekeeping mission in the region.
But it is unclear whether the Pakistani-brokered U.S.-Iran ceasefire — which the French president hailed as “a very good thing” — will extend as far as Macron hopes.
Though Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said this would be the case, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu said overnight that the ceasefire “does not include Lebanon.”
