French President Emmanuel Macron Proposes International Coalition to Combat Hamas: Latest Updates

2023-10-25 01:41:00
French President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (EFE/EPA/CHRISTOPHE ENA)

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, proposed this Tuesday to the Israeli prime minister and the president of the Palestinian Authority to combat the Hamas terrorist movement with an international coalition.

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Macron arrived in Amman, Jordan, on Tuesday night following visiting Jerusalem, where in addition to meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he met with Israeli President Isaac Harzog.

During the meeting, he proposed that the international coalition created in 2014 under the leadership of the United States to combat the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq “can also fight Hamas.”

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The French president also called on Iran, which supports Hamas, and its allies to “not run the risk of opening new fronts,” advocating relaunching “the political process with the Palestinians.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared a few hours later that Washington would respond “decisively” to any attack by Iran.

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The French president later traveled to Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, where he spoke with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmud Abbas, and assured that “nothing can justify the suffering” of civilians in Gaza.

“A Palestinian life is worth a French life, which is worth an Israeli life,” stressed Macron, the first Western leader to visit the headquarters of the Palestinian organization – which does not exercise any power in the Gaza Strip – since the start of the war.

Israel bombs the Palestinian enclave, in response to the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 and as a prelude to a probable ground offensive.

Emmanuel Macron with Mahmoud Abbas (Christophe Ena/Pool via REUTERS)

During his visit to Jerusalem, Macron stressed the urgency of releasing “all the hostages, without any distinction.”

Hamas on Monday released Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, and Nurit Kuper, 79, two women of Israeli nationality. An American woman and her daughter had been freed three days earlier.

Lifschitz told the press this Tuesday that she lived through “hell” and was “beaten” when she was kidnapped in Kibbutz Nir Oz, although she was later “well treated” during her captivity of more than two weeks in the Gaza Strip.

“A doctor came every two or three days to check on us and to make sure we had medication,” he added.

Qatar affirmed that negotiators “hope to obtain other releases,” according to the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Gulf country, Majed al Ansari.

Hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel from Gaza on October 7, during an attack unprecedented since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

More than 1,400 people died, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities, who also recorded the capture of 220 people taken hostage to Gaza.

“We want to completely dismantle Hamas: its leaders, its military wing and its operating mechanisms,” said the head of the Israeli General Staff, Herzi Halevi, surrounded by several men in arms, in a video published Tuesday on the X social network.

Israel has imposed a land, sea and air blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, took power in 2007.

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