“It cannot be argued that Gaza is occupied. Israel left Gaza willingly, yet they target our children as they are leaving for school,” Israeli President Shimon Peres told French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who paid a one-day-visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories on Sunday.
Peres pleaded Israel’s case for protecting “the millions of innocent people in southern Israel who cannot close their eyes for fear of the rockets”.
“Israel has been left with no option other than to defend itself,” he said.
Fabius also met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman, with the aim of calling on all parties “to stop the escalation and to propose France’s help to reach an immediate ceasefire”, claimed a statement by his office.
The brief visit also saw the Minister travel to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, whose internationally-recognised administration has expressed its hope for the success of mediation attempts, largely led by Egypt’s Islamist government, despite equally distancing itself from involvement in talks between Gaza rivals Hamas and Israel.
Asserting Israel’s desire “to return to a normal routine”, Peres said this could be achieved once its goal “to put an end to the firing on the south and to enable mothers a quiet, continuous night’s sleep that has not been possible for some time” had been accomplished in turn.
Accepting Peres’ case for disturbance to the lives of innocent Israelis, Fabius contended “there are fatalities in Gaza as well”, as he reiterated French President Francois Hollande’s warnings the region had effectively entered a state of emergency. Summing up the somewhat divided French position, in light of its close relations with both Israel and the PA, he repeated his calls for a French-facilitated ceasefire, as he concluded: “France is a peace-seeking nation; we maintain relations with everyone and will do all in our power to assist in returning quiet to the region."
Ahead of Fabius’ departure to the region, he cautioned Thursday following Israel’s assassination of Hamas military head Ahmed Jabari and Hamas’ subsequent military response, that violence “will settle nothing”.
“I call for restraint because is an already very disturbed region, another escalation would be a disaster”, he told French radio station RTL.
“Israel of course has the right to defend itself, but we achieve nothing with a renewed bout of violence. The Palestinians are entitled to a state, we have to repeat, Israel is entitled to its security, but we won’t solve the problems by violence”, he concluded.
Meanwhile, later that day, Hollande broke his silence over the Gaza escalation, by revealing he had chosen to make contact with Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in preference to Netanyahu. In an official statement on the two leaders’ conversation, Hollande said he had “expressed France’s deep concern” at the latest flare-up of violence in the region and “called for restraint to avoid an escalation which would endanger the population” of Gaza and the south of Israel.
Stressing the role “Egypt could play in diminishing tensions”, Hollande’s statement went on to insist that “all the international community’s efforts must combine to avoid all unilateral activity and all provocative action which could aggravate the situation”.
Insisting France was “fully engaged with its EU partners and the UN Security Council” to issue such an united response, his words will have done little to redress the uneasiness created by the only previous comment by the French administration, a foreign ministry statement earlier Thursday afternoon, expressing the republic’s “extreme concern at the deterioration in the situation in Gaza and in southern Israel”.
Urging caution on both sides to avoid contributing further to the escalation of violence, the official comment concluded only by expressing concern for the safety of its expatriate citizens.
The French President had been due to receive his Palestinian counterpart Abbas in Paris when the latest violence broke out, obliging the Palestinian leader to cut short his tour of Europe. Hollande has met with Abbas i, person several times since assuming office, in contrast to just one face-to-face meeting with Netanyahu earlier this month in Paris.
Ahead of the violence outbreak and subsequent cancellation of the Abas visit, Hollande had told a press conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris, that “everything must be done to have direct talks between Israel and Palestine”.
Questioned Tuesday on the French position regarding the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s much-touted demand for non-member observer status at the UN General Assembly, during the course of a press conference at the Elysee Palace, the head of state declared: “I will say to him (President Abbas) what I think. Everything must be done to first have direct talks but the appeal could also force these direct talks to open on acceptable foundations, which is to say that of two states”.
“If there is a resolution (at the UN General Assembly), France will look at it in context and take whatever position seems the best,” added Hollande, emphasising that the “risk for our Palestinian friends (is) to see Americans take responsive measures without advancing the cause of talks between Israel and Palestine”.
“We speak about it with President Mahmoud Abbas with this idea of advancing one lone objective for us which is negotiations to find a definitive solution to this conflict,” he added.