Israel rejected a French mediation effort with the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Friday, saying that France had adopted “hostile” policies toward Israel and ignored atrocities carried out by Hamas terrorists.
In a statement, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said:
As we fight a just war, defending our people, France has adopted hostile policies against Israel.
In doing so, France ignores the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli children, women and men.
Israel will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France.
France, the former colonial power in Lebanon, had proposed mediating as Hezbollah, which illegally occupies the border region in southern Lebanon, stepped up its attacks on Israel, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded.
But France has tarnished its credibility with Israel. In November, President Emmanuel Macron claimed falsely that Israel is killing “babies and women” in Gaza. More recently, France supported the enforcement of potential arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court against Gallant and against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Other mediation efforts have also faltered. The United States, represented by special envoy Amos Hochstein, has reportedly proposed that Israel withdraw its troops from its own border to ease tensions, effectively granting victory to Hezbollah and allowing it operational control of the border region. The U.S. is eager to protect the stability of the Lebanese government, which it has supported financially, even though the government is dominated by Hezbollah.
The violence, which began in October after Hezbollah began firing at Israel in solidarity with the Hamas terror attack, is a major failure for Biden administration policy, which proposed a major gas deal in 2022 that was supposed to help maintain peace. Biden pushed Israel to give up offshore gas fields to Lebanon, arguing that would appease Hezbollah.
The public backlash in Israel against that deal, which was not ratified by the Knesset, but upheld by Israel’s Supreme Court, is partly why Netanyahu was able to make a political comeback in 2022 on a platform of judicial reform.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
