JERUSALEM: Israel’s security cannot be guaranteed with military force alone and will require a diplomatic solution, France’s foreign minister said on Monday, and Paris would continue efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Speaking at the end of a four-day tour of the Middle East, Jean-Noel Barrot was in Israel on Monday to mark a year since Hamas militants crossed into Israel killing around 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage back to Gaza.
The assault triggered an Israeli military campaign in Gaza that has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s health ministry. The war has spread conflict across the region with Israel stepping up military operations over its northern border in Lebanon against Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
“Force alone cannot guarantee the security of Israel, your security. Military success cannot be a substitute for a political perspective,” Barrot told a news conference in Jerusalem.
“To bring the hostages home to their loved ones, to allow the displaced to return home in the north (of Israel), after a year of war, the time for diplomacy has come.”
Barrot’s arrival in Israel, where about 180,000 French citizens live, came at a tricky time in Franco-Israeli relations after President Emmanuel Macron was firmly rebuffed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the weekend.
Macron had called for a de facto arms embargo on Israel and, in a veiled attack on the US, said countries that both supplied weapons and called for a ceasefire where they were being used in conflict were being incoherent. French arms supplies to Israel are minimal.
Barrot reiterated that it was odd to call for a ceasefire while giving offensive weapons. He said that France, as a staunch defender of Israel’s security, felt it was vital to be frank about the ongoing suffering of civilians in Gaza, but also the military operation now in southern Lebanon.
France worked with the United States in trying to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon at the end of September. Diplomatic sources had at the time believed this had secured a temporary truce, a day before Israel heavily bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
“We have a responsibility to act today to avoid Lebanon finding itself in a short horizon in a dramatic situation like Syria found itself a few years ago,” Barrot said.
Ceasefire proposals put forward together with Washington remain on the table, he said.
Force alone will not lead to Israel’s security, France says
https://arab.news/5cbft
Force alone will not lead to Israel’s security, France says
- “Force alone cannot guarantee the security of Israel, your security. Military success cannot be a substitute for a political perspective,” Barrot said
High-level Turkish team to visit Damascus on Monday for talks on SDF integration
- The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal
ANKARA: A high-level Turkish delegation will visit Damascus on Monday to discuss bilateral ties and the implementation of a deal for integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into Syria’s state apparatus, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal. But Ankara accuses the SDF of stalling ahead of a year-end deadline.
Turkiye views the US-backed SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, as a terrorist organization and has warned of military action if the group does not honor the agreement.
Last week Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara hoped to avoid resorting to military action against the SDF but that its patience was running out.
The Foreign Ministry source said Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler and the head of Turkiye’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, would attend the talks in Damascus, a year after the fall of former President Bashar Assad.
TURKEY SAYS ITS NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT STAKE
The source said the integration deal “closely concerned Turkiye’s national security priorities” and the delegation would discuss its implementation. Turkiye has said integration must ensure that the SDF’s chain of command is broken.
Sources have previously told Reuters that Damascus sent a proposal to the SDF expressing openness to reorganizing the group’s roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units.
Turkiye sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and says it too must disarm and dissolve itself, in line with a disarmament process now underway between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Ankara has conducted cross-border military operations against the SDF in the past. It accuses the group of wanting to circumvent the integration deal and says this poses a threat to both Turkiye and the unity of Syria.
