Macron urges Netanyahu to avoid ground offensive in Lebanon

PARIS: France’s President Emmanuel Macron said he urged Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to “refrain from a ground offensive” in Lebanon in their first phone call since last summer.

“I called on the Israeli prime minister to preserve Lebanon’s territorial integrity and to refrain from a ground offensive,” Macron said on X, after Israeli ground forces pushed into several border towns and villages in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon, a former French protectorate, was drawn into the Middle East war on Monday when the group Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the death of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes at the weekend.

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The French president said he also spoke to Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, stressing the need for Hezbollah “to immediately cease its attacks against Israel and beyond”.

Relations between Macron and Netanyahu soured last summer after the French leader declared France’s intention to recognise Palestinian statehood.

France formally recognised a Palestinian state in late September, before a fragile ceasefire took hold in the Gaza Strip the following month.

In a letter sent in mid-August, Netanyahu had complained the French plan to recognise a Palestinian state was fuelling antisemitism – to which Macron responded that the fight against antisemitism should “not be weaponised”.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said in early September that his government would not agree to Macron visiting so long as Paris planned to recognise a Palestinian state.