France expresses firm opposition to impending Israeli attack on Rafah

By Ahmet Gencturk

ATHENS (AA) - France is firmly opposed to an impending Israeli attack on the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday.

In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Macron said the attack “could only lead to a humanitarian disaster of a new magnitude, as to any forced displacement of populations, which would constitute violations of international humanitarian law and would pose an additional risk of regional escalation,” according to a statement released by the Elysee Palace.

Underlining the urgency of delivering a massive amount of humanitarian aid to Gaza, he said “the lack of sufficient humanitarian access to a population in a situation of absolute humanitarian emergency was unjustifiable.”

Macron also urged Netanyahu to avoid steps that could lead to an uncontrolled escalation in Jerusalem and the West Bank and said it is important for Israel to put an end to the violence committed by some Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“He stressed that only the two-state solution, which involved the creation of a Palestinian state, could meet the security needs of Israel and the Israeli people and meet the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians for a state living in peace and security alongside Israel,” the statement added.

France on Tuesday imposed an entry ban on 28 extremist Jewish settlers said to have used violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Paris also expressed its support for applying sanctions against Jewish settlers at the European level and affirmed its commitment to working with its European partners toward this end.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, killing at least 28,576 people and injuring 68,291 others, while nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.