French President Emmanuel Macron has further strained tense relations with Israel with a comment referring to the creation of the Israeli state, a verbal jab that was rapidly denounced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as distorting history.
Macron has sought to take a more uncompromising stance on the conflicts in the Middle East after Israel launched an offensive against targets of the Shiite operator Hezbollah in Lebanon, a former French protectorate.
The French leader said last week that stopping the export of weapons used by Israel in Lebanon and in its war against the Palestinian operator Hamas in the Gaza Strip was the only way to stop the two conflicts.
France, which is home to Europe’s largest Jewish population, has repeatedly urged a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, but has also increasingly criticised Israel over the heavy civilian toll in the conflicts.
Paris has also denounced Israeli fire against the 10,000 peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon, which includes a French contingent of around 700 troops.
In a new sign of the tensions between the countries, organisers of the major Euronaval defence show outside Paris next month said that following a decision of the French government, no Israeli stands or exhibits would be allowed at the salon.
‘Not the time’
“Mr Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN,” Macron told the weekly French cabinet meeting on Tuesday, referring to the resolution adopted in November 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
His comments during the closed-door meeting at the Elysee Palace were quoted by two participants who spoke to AFP and asked not to be named.
“Therefore this is not the time to disregard the decisions of the UN,” he added. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 states that only the Lebanese army and UNIFIL should be deployed in southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu hit back at Macron’s comments later Tuesday, saying the country’s founding was achieved by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, not a UN ruling.
He also said that among those who fought for Israel in 1948 were French Jews who had been sent to death camps after being rounded up by the collaborationist Vichy regime, which governed France during the Nazi occupation in World War II.
“A reminder to the president of France: It was not the UN resolution that established the State of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the war of independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors — including from the Vichy regime in France,” Netanyahu said.
The French presidency’s readout of a phone call between both men Tuesday — sent deep in the night, several hours after the conversation took place — made clear the testy nature of the exchange.
Macron told Netanyahu that he condemned “the indiscriminate Israeli strikes that only add to an already intolerable human toll, in Gaza as in Lebanon”, it said.
‘What does it imply?’
But Macron’s comment on Israel’s creation had also caused concern within the Jewish community in France.
Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), an umbrella group, said the remarks “if confirmed” constituted a “both a historical and political error”.
He said such comments ignored the “century-old history of Zionism”, the movement that aimed to build a Jewish homeland.
“At a time when anti-Semitism feeds on anti-Zionism, these remarks dangerously strengthen the camp of those who contest the legitimacy of Israel’s right to exist,” he wrote on X.
Caroline Yadan, an MP for Macron’s centrist party, said the comments attributed to the president were “unworthy”.
“Reducing Israel to a single UN decision is to deny the history of the Jewish people and its legitimate and historical connection to this land,” she wrote on X. “What does this statement imply? That what the UN has done, the UN can undo? Is this a warning?”
“Macron’s words have sown trouble in the macronie,” said the left-wing daily Liberation, using the colloquial term for Macron’s supporters.