UN says informed Israel of vehicle fatally hit in Gaza

UN says informed Israel of vehicle fatally hit in Gaza
alestinians line up to receive humanitarian aid amidst tents housing internally displaced people, along the coastline in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on May 10, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas (AFP)
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Updated 14 May 2024
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UN says informed Israel of vehicle fatally hit in Gaza

UN says informed Israel of vehicle fatally hit in Gaza
  • The employee killed was an Indian national, UN spokesman Rolando Gomez told a media briefing
  • A second UN DSS staff member who was in the vehicle at the time was wounded in the attack

Geneva: The United Nations said Tuesday that it had informed the Israeli authorities of the movements of a vehicle carrying UN staff which was hit in southern Gaza, killing an Indian.
One UN security services member was killed and another wounded in the attack on Monday, the United Nations said, marking the first death of a UN international employee in the Palestinian territory since the war began more than seven months ago.
The employee killed was an Indian national, UN spokesman Rolando Gomez told a media briefing.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of Col Waibhav Kale, working for the UN Department of Safety and Security in Gaza,” India’s mission to the UN in New York confirmed on X.
“Our deepest condolences are with the family during this difficult time.”
A second UN DSS staff member who was in the vehicle at the time was wounded in the attack, Gomez said, adding that the two had been traveling to the European Hospital in Rafah when their vehicle was hit.
“The UN informs Israeli authorities of the movement of all of our convoys. That has been the case in any theater of operation. This is a standard operating procedure,” said Gomez.
“This was the case yesterday (Monday) morning, so we have informed them. And it was a clearly marked UN vehicle.”
He added: “This is a sheer illustration that there’s really nowhere safe in Gaza at the moment.”
When asked about the attack, the Israeli military sent AFP a statement apparently drafted on Monday saying that the DSS had informed it of the hit.
“An initial inquiry conducted indicates that the vehicle was hit in an area declared an active combat zone,” the military said, maintaining that it had “not been made aware of the route of the vehicle.”
“The incident is under review,” it said, without attributing responsibility for the strike.
Gomez said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called for a full investigation.
“Of course we want accountability. This is the ultimate aim of this investigation. International humanitarian workers are not targets, so such attacks must end,” he said.
While Monday’s attack marked the first time a UN international employee has been killed in the Gaza war, a large number of local staff have been killed.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, alone has lost 188 of its 13,000 Gaza staff, according to UN figures.
“No one is safe in Gaza, including aid workers,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on X, formerly Twitter.
The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,173 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.


US, France and allies call for ‘immediate’ 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah

US, France and allies call for ‘immediate’ 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah
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US, France and allies call for ‘immediate’ 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah

US, France and allies call for ‘immediate’ 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah
  • In a joint statement, the allies said the recent fighting is “intolerable and presents an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation”
  • The signatories include Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia and Canada

NEW YORK: The US, France and other allies jointly called Wednesday for an “immediate” 21-day ceasefire to allow for negotiations in the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that has killed more than 600 people in Lebanon in recent days.
The joint statement, negotiated on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, says the recent fighting is “intolerable and presents an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation.”
“We call for an immediate 21-day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy,” the statement reads. “We call on all parties, including the Governments of Israel and Lebanon, to endorse the temporary ceasefire immediately.”
The signatories include the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told the UN Security Council during a meeting that “we are counting on both parties to accept it without delay.”
Barrot said France, a former colonial power to Lebanon, and the US had consulted with the sides on “final parameters for a diplomatic way out of this crisis,” adding that “war is not unavoidable.”
US deputy ambassador to the UN Robert Wood encouraged the council to support the diplomatic efforts but didn’t offer specifics about the plan.
“We are working with other countries on a proposal that we hope will lead to calm and enable discussions to a diplomatic solution,” he said.
Earlier Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US administration was “intensely engaged with a number of partners to deescalate tensions in Lebanon and to work to get a ceasefire agreement that would have so many benefits for all concerned.”
Blinken and other advisers to President Joe Biden have spent the past three days at and on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly meeting of world leaders in New York lobbying other countries to support the plan, according to US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic conversations.
Americans hope such a ceasefire could lead to longer-term stability along the border between Israel and Lebanon. Months of Israeli and Hezbollah exchanges of fire across the border drove tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border, and escalated attacks this week have rekindled fears of a broader war in the Middle East.
Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and senior advisers Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein have been meeting with Middle East allies in New York and have been in touch with Israeli officials about the proposal, one of the US officials said. McGurk and Hochstein have been the White House’s chief interlocutors with Israel and Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group.
An Israeli official said Netanyahu has given the green light to pursue a possible deal, but only if it includes the return of Israeli civilians to their homes. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing behind-the-scenes diplomacy.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati threw his support behind the French-US plan that “enjoys international support and which would put an end to this dirty war.”
He called on the Security Council “to guarantee the withdrawal of Israel from all the occupied Lebanese territories and the violations that are repeated on a daily basis.”
Israel’s UN Ambassador, Danny Danon, told journalists at the United Nations that Israel would like to see a ceasefire and the return of people to their homes near the border: “It will happen, either after a war or before a war. We hope it will be before.”
Addressing the Security Council later Wednesday night, he made no mention of negotiations on a temporary ceasefire but said Israel “does not seek a full-scale war.”
Both Danon and Mikati reffirmed their governments’ commitment to a Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon. Never fully implemented, it called for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon to be replaced by Lebanese forces and UN peacekeepers, and the disarmament of all armed groups including Hezbollah.
Danon demanded that the resolution be enforced in full without delay: “I make this declaration here today, to remove any doubt: Never again. Never again will the Jewish people hide from the monsters whose purpose in life is to murder Jews.”
Earlier Wednesday, Biden warned in an appearance on ABC’s “The View” that “an all-out war is possible” but said he thinks the opportunity also exists “to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region.”
Biden suggested that getting Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a ceasefire could help achieve a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. That war is approaching the one-year mark after Hamas raids in southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people. Israel responded with an offensive that has since killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not provide a breakdown of civilians and fighters in their count.
“It’s possible and I’m using every bit of energy I have with my team … to get this done,” Biden said. “There’s a desire to see change in the region.”
The US and other international mediators have tried and failed for months to broker a ceasefire in Gaza that also would release hostages held by Hamas.
The US government also raised the pressure with additional sanctions Wednesday targeting more than a dozen ships and other entities it says were involved in illicit shipments of Iranian petroleum for the financial benefit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, the chief of Israel’s army said Wednesday that the military is preparing for a possible ground operation in Lebanon as Hezbollah hurled dozens of projectiles into Israel, including a missile aimed at Tel Aviv that was the militant group’s deepest strike yet.
Blinken has been urging both Israel and Hezbollah to step back from their intensifying conflict, saying that all-out war would be disastrous for the region and that escalation was not the way to get people back to their homes on the Israel-Lebanon border.
“It would be through a diplomatic agreement that has forces pulled back from the border, create a secure environment, people return home,” Blinken told NBC News. “That’s what we’re driving toward because while there’s a very legitimate issue here, we don’t think that war is the solution.”
 


Israel tells its troops to prepare for a possible ground operation in Lebanon

Israel tells its troops to prepare for a possible ground operation in Lebanon
Updated 26 September 2024
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Israel tells its troops to prepare for a possible ground operation in Lebanon

Israel tells its troops to prepare for a possible ground operation in Lebanon
  • Israel said Wednesday its air force had struck some 280 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon by early afternoon, including launchers used to fire rockets on the northern Israeli cities of Safed and Nahariya

TEL AVIV, Israel: Israel is preparing for a possible ground operation in Lebanon, its army chief said Wednesday as Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets across the border and a missile aimed at Tel Aviv that was the militant group’s deepest strike yet.
Addressing troops on the northern border, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Israel’s punishing airstrikes this week were designed to ”prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
Israel says it targeted Hezbollah weapons and rocket launchers in attacks that have killed more than 600 people, at least a quarter of them women and children, according to Lebanese health officials.
In an apparent reference to the missile fired at Tel Aviv, Halevi told troops: “Today, Hezbollah expanded its range of fire, and later today, they will receive a very strong response. Prepare yourselves.”
It was not clear whether he was referring to a ground operation, airstrikes or some other form of retaliation against Hezbollah, which is Lebanon’s strongest political force and, with backing from Iran, is widely considered the top paramilitary group in the Arab world.
The Israeli military has said in recent days it had no immediate plans for a ground invasion, but Halevi’s comments were the strongest yet suggesting troops could move in. Israeli said Wednesday it would activate two reserve brigades for missions in the north — another sign that Israel plans tougher action.
In the southern Israeli city of Eilat, a building at the port was struck by a drone, an attack that injured two people and was claimed by an umbrella group for Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. A second drone was intercepted, the Israeli military said.
Footage aired on Israeli media showed a plume of smoke in the area and at least one damaged building. The army said the drones were identified “approaching from the East.”
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have steadily escalated since war broke out 11 months ago between Israel and Hamas, another Iran-backed militant group. Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas. Israel has responded with increasingly heavy airstrikes and the targeted killing of Hezbollah commanders while threatening a wider operation.
Nearly a year of fighting had already displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border before the recent escalation.
Israel has vowed to do whatever it takes to ensure its citizens can return to their homes in the north, while Hezbollah has said it will keep up its rocket attacks until there is a ceasefire in Gaza, something that appears increasingly remote.
To allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes, “we are preparing the process of a maneuver,” Halevi told troops.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel and Hezbollah to step back, saying all-out war would be disastrous for the region and its people.
In New York for the annual UN General Assembly, Blinken said the US was working with other partners on a temporary ceasefire plan to reduce tensions and allow Israelis and Lebanese to return to their homes in border areas.
US officials say they are floating ideas but have not been specific. Some may be discussed at a special UN Security Council meeting on Lebanon that France called for later Wednesday.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 72 people were killed Wednesday in the continuing Israeli strikes, raising the death toll from the past three days to 636, with more than 2,000 wounded.
At Dar Al Amal hospital in the eastern city of Baalbek, Soumaya Moussawi lay in bed with her head bandaged and face bruised.
She had been sitting outside with relatives when warplanes started striking in the distance, she said.
“Then suddenly it hit next to us. We were all thrown in different directions,” she said. Two cousins and her father were killed, and another cousin was badly wounded.
This week has been the deadliest in Lebanon since the bruising 2006 monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said it fired a Qader 1 ballistic missile targeting the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, which it blames for a recent string of targeted killings of its top commanders and for an attack last week in which explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies killed dozens of people and wounded thousands, including many Hezbollah members.
Israeli military officials said they intercepted a surface-to-surface missile that set off air-raid sirens in Tel Aviv and across central Israel. There were no reports of casualties or damage. The military said it struck the launch site in southern Lebanon.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said the missile fired Wednesday had a “heavy warhead” but declined to elaborate or confirm it was the type described by Hezbollah. He dismissed Hezbollah’s claim of targeting the Mossad headquarters just north of Tel Aviv as “psychological warfare.”
The Israeli military said it was the first time a projectile fired from Lebanon had reached central Israel. Hezbollah claimed to have targeted an intelligence base near Tel Aviv last month in an aerial attack, but there was no confirmation. Hamas repeatedly targeted Tel Aviv in the opening months of the war in Gaza.
The launch ratcheted up hostilities in a region that appeared to be teetering toward another all-out war, even as Israel continues to battle Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The Iranian-made Qader is a medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile with multiple types and payloads. It can carry an explosive payload of up to 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds), according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Iranian officials have described the liquid-fueled missile as having a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles).
Israel said Wednesday its air force had struck some 280 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon by early afternoon, including launchers used to fire rockets on the northern Israeli cities of Safed and Nahariya.
Fleeing families have flocked to Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon, sleeping in schools turned into shelters, as well as in cars, parks and along the beach. Some sought to leave the country, causing a traffic jam at the border with Syria.
The United Nations said more than 90,000 people have been displaced by five days of Israeli strikes. In all, 200,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel nearly a year ago, drawing Israeli retaliation, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Hezbollah’s latest strikes included dozens of rockets fired Wednesday into northern Israel, the military said.
Rocket fire over the past week has disrupted life for more than 1 million people across northern Israel, with schools closed and public gatherings restricted. Many restaurants and other businesses are shut in the coastal city of Haifa, and there are fewer people on the streets. Some who fled from communities near the border are coming under rocket fire again.
Israel has moved thousands of troops who had been serving in Gaza to the northern border. It says Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles, including some capable of striking anywhere in Israel.
Cross-border fire began ramping up Sunday after pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah were attacked remotely, killing 39 people and wounded nearly 3,000, many of them civilians. Lebanon blamed Israel, which has not confirmed or denied responsibility.
The next day, Israel said its warplanes struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets, destroying cruise missiles, long- and short-range rockets and attack drones, including weapons concealed in private homes. The strikes racked up the highest one-day death toll in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bruising monthlong war in 2006.


Saudi aid chief appeals for international assistance to Sudan

Saudi aid chief appeals for international assistance to Sudan
Updated 25 September 2024
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Saudi aid chief appeals for international assistance to Sudan

Saudi aid chief appeals for international assistance to Sudan
  • Abdullah Al-Rabeeah: It is a ‘collective responsibility’ to help conflict-ravaged country
  • Kingdom has allocated more than $3bn in aid to ‘brotherly’ Sudan

NEW YORK CITY: Saudi Arabia’s aid chief on Wednesday issued an impassioned plea for assistance to Sudan at a high-level event in New York City on the sidelines of the 79th UN General Assembly.

Saudi Arabia has allocated more than $3 billion in aid to the conflict-ravaged country, where almost 26 million people are now facing crisis levels of food insecurity.

About 11 million Sudanese have fled the country following the outbreak of civil war, seeking refuge in neighboring states and beyond.

The Kingdom is employing a twin strategy of peacemaking and aid relief to bring an end to the crisis, but the international response to Sudan has consistently underwhelmed, threatening to condemn millions more to suffering, said Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, supervisor general of Saudi aid agency KSrelief. The UN’s own refugee appeal for Sudan is only 25 percent funded.

The event, “The Cost of Inaction,” was hosted by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the US, the EU, the African Union and the UN in a bid to draw global attention to the scale of suffering in Sudan and rally support for a worldwide humanitarian appeal.

In his address, Al-Rabeeah said it is a “collective responsibility” to assist Sudan, a “brotherly country whose people are facing great challenges that they’re attempting to overcome, and they deserve our full support.”

Saudi Arabia is “fully aware” of its duty toward Sudan, he added, highlighting the “great efforts” made by the Kingdom to address the crisis since the beginning of the civil war.

These efforts were carried out “in order to find means to bring hope back to Sudan, and this includes the Jeddah Declaration for the protection of civilians as well as humanitarian access,” he said.

“However, the escalation of violence that has recently been seen in a number of regions has caused even further damage, pushing millions of people to flee their homes, leaving behind their families and their possessions.”

Despite Saudi Arabia allocating $3 billion in assistance to Sudan and carrying out a number of relief missions earlier this year, “the worsening of the security situation has impacted the progress that had been made,” Al-Rabeeah said, adding that in response, the Kingdom has “redoubled its efforts” and stepped up its contributions.

“Since April 2023, we’ve launched a number of projects. Together with the UN and other humanitarian organizations, we’ve brought in assistance through land and sea routes. We’re providing support to the government and also carrying out a campaign to assist the Sudanese people with contributions above $125 million,” Al-Rabeeah said.

“However, despite all of these efforts made by our country, challenges remain, and the crisis requires coordinated efforts in order to bring unhindered humanitarian access to the country and provide a sustainable and coordinated response, as well as safe unhindered access to areas affected by conflict.”

Al-Rabeeah urged the international community to look past “political considerations” to formulate a powerful response to the crisis in Sudan.

“This is a humanitarian tragedy that requires us to overcome existing divisions. We must ensure genuine change that will allow the entirety of the Sudanese people to restore their normal lives,” he said, adding that Saudi Arabia “is making significant efforts to make sure that this necessary assistance is delivered to the Sudanese people, who deserve a dignified life.”

Al-Rabeeah’s address was followed by Dr. Obaida El-Dandarawy, Egypt’s deputy assistant foreign minister for UN affairs.

El-Dandarawy highlighted his country’s hosting of more than 1.5 million Sudanese refugees, in addition to the 5 million who already reside in Egypt.

“We’ve opened our doors widely to host our brothers and sisters from Sudan,” he said. “However, Egypt and neighboring countries on their own can’t continue carrying this burden, and that’s why we need to make sure that various countries, organizations and donors need to shoulder their humanitarian responsibility, and they have to help Egypt and the neighboring countries so that we can carry out this task, a heavy one, both in terms of the social and economic dimensions.”

He added: “We need to send a clear message to the sons and daughters of Sudan, and say that the international community is aware of their suffering and will spare no effort.”

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the chamber: “I feel, as I know all of you must, a sense of shame and embarrassment that this is happening on our watch.”

Filippo Grandi, UN high commissioner for refugees, echoed Al-Rabeeah’s appeal, painting a stark picture of the reality on the ground.

“I went to Sudan twice this year, and as many of you have said, and I want to reiterate, conditions are apocalyptic,” he said.

“If people don’t die because of bullets, they starve to death. If they manage to survive, they must face disease, or floods, or the threat of sexual violence and other horrifying abuse, which if perpetrated in other places would make daily headlines.”

Grandi said humanitarian convoys in Sudan face being held up by closed roads due to flooding, or fired on and shelled by fighters.

“The solution to this crisis lies inside Sudan, but I can assure you its consequences won’t be contained to the region,” he warned.

“Let me just join everybody else on this panel in saying that more than anything else we need a political solution, because this is a crisis that can be solved, and it must be solved now.”


‘We feel their pain’: Gazans stunned by strikes on Lebanon

‘We feel their pain’: Gazans stunned by strikes on Lebanon
Updated 25 September 2024
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‘We feel their pain’: Gazans stunned by strikes on Lebanon

‘We feel their pain’: Gazans stunned by strikes on Lebanon
  • Filled with empathy, fear, Palestinians worry how the widening war might affect them

GAZA STRIP: As Israeli bombs flattened buildings and sent smoke billowing skywards over Lebanon this week, Gazans looked on with both empathy and fear over how the widening war might affect them.

Israel carried out a third day of airstrikes against Lebanon on Wednesday.

In a dramatic escalation after nearly a year of cross-border violence, Israeli air raids on Monday killed at least 558 people in Lebanon in the country’s deadliest day since the 1975-1990 civil war.

After the unprecedented Oct. 7 attack by militants against southern Israel, Hezbollah said it began striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iran-backed group.

The Oct. 7 attack sparked the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, marked by relentless Israeli bombardment that has devastated much of the Palestinian territory.

Chadi Nawfal, a 24-year-old resident of Gaza City who said he lost his home in an Israeli strike, said footage from Lebanon was hard to watch.

“The bloody scenes from Lebanon that we see on our television screens are very harsh images,” he said.

“We people in the Gaza Strip are the only ones who can currently feel the pain that the Lebanese people are experiencing.”

The sustained Israeli aerial assault on Lebanon is the latest in a series of attacks that began last week with coordinated blasts of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies.

The explosions killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000, and were followed by a deadly strike on Friday on south Beirut, with leading Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil among the dead.

Another strike on the Lebanese capital on Tuesday killed Hezbollah rocket forces commander Ibrahim Kobeissi.

Taken together, Israel’s onslaught confirmed its Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s claim a week ago that the war’s “center of gravity” was moving northward.

Ayman Al-Amreiti, another displaced resident of Gaza City, said he was worried the fighting in Lebanon would mean the ongoing war in Gaza gets less global attention.

“The military weight is now shifting to Lebanon, so even the media attention on the Gaza Strip has become secondary,” the 42-year-old said.

“This encourages the appetite of the occupation (Israel) to commit more crimes.”

Hamas’s attack on Israel nearly a year ago resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people.

Of the 251 hostages seized by militants that day, 97 are still being held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least nearly 41,500 people in Gaza, mostly civilians. 

There are obvious differences in time frame and scale, but Umm Munzir Naim, 52, said she could not help but see similarities between the fighting in Lebanon and in Gaza.

“The war against Lebanon and Hezbollah is a war like in Gaza. The victims are the people,” she said.

“The small, the big, the properties, everything is targeted — humans, trees ... they say it’s against Hamas and Hezbollah, but on the ground it’s people who die.”

Amreiti said he hoped the fighting would end soon in both places, and that their fates could even be linked given Hezbollah’s past pledges to stop fighting once a Gaza ceasefire comes about.

“The outcome, the hope is that any settlement with Hezbollah will also involve Gaza,” he said.

“Right now, that is the hope that the children of the Palestinian people are turning to.”


Macron urges Israel, Hezbollah to de-escalate tensions

Macron urges Israel, Hezbollah to de-escalate tensions
Updated 25 September 2024
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Macron urges Israel, Hezbollah to de-escalate tensions

Macron urges Israel, Hezbollah to de-escalate tensions
  • French president calls for creation of Palestinian state with ‘security guarantees for Israel’
  • ‘Israel can’t, without consequence, just expand its operations to Lebanon. We can’t have a war in Lebanon’

NEW YORK CITY: French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called for Israel and Hezbollah to de-escalate tensions.

“Israel can’t, without consequence, just expand its operations to Lebanon,” he told the UN General Assembly. “We can’t have a war in Lebanon.”

Macron said France would act to “ensure a diplomatic voice can be heard,” adding: “We should look for peace everywhere and not accept any differences at a time when human lives are at stake.”

Regarding Gaza, he said Israel “has a legitimate right to protect their own people and to deny Hamas the means of attacking them again.”

However, he added that Israel’s invasion of Gaza has gone on for “too long,” and there is no justification for the deaths of Palestinians.

He called for the release of hostages held by Hamas, including several French citizens, along with a ceasefire and humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

Macron offered France’s participation in “any initiatives that will save lives and will allow for everyone’s safety to be protected” because “it’s imperative that a new page is turned in Gaza, for the guns to be silent, for humanitarian workers to return, (and) for civilians to finally be protected.”

France is committed to the creation of a Palestinian state with “security guarantees for Israel,” he said, reiterating his country’s commitment to working with Israelis, Palestinians and other partners to create the conditions for a just and lasting peace.