Herzog to Macron: Hezbollah, Iran playing with fire

Macron will also travel to Ramallah where he will meet with Palestinian Authority officials.

TOVAH LAZAROFF OCTOBER 24, 2023 07:54

Updated: OCTOBER 24, 2023 10:25
French President Emmanuel Macron meets with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, during the former’s one-day visit to Israel, October 24, 2023(photo credit: AMOS BEN-GERSHOM/GPO)
In a push to prevent a regional escalation with Iran, French President Emmanuel Macron landed in Israel on Tuesday for a one-day solidarity visit.

Macron met with families of the victims of Hamas’s October 7 infiltration into southern Israel in which over 1,400 civilians and soldiers were killed and another 222 were taken hostage.

“We are bound to Israel through mourning,” he told the families.

After the meeting, he tweeted that 30 of the dead held French citizenship as do nine of the missing.

Macron then met separately with President Isaac Herzog.

EN DIRECT | À Tel-Aviv, le Président @EmmanuelMacron rencontre le Président Isaac Herzog, Président de l’Etat d’Israël. https://t.co/024yCcIaW6

— Élysée (@Elysee) October 24, 2023
He will later Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister Benny Gantz (National Union), and former prime minister (Yair Lapid) who heads the Yesh Atid Party.

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French President Emmanuel Macron hugs a woman as he meets Israeli-French nationals who have lost loved ones, as well as families of hostages, at the Ben Gurion airport, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023 in Tel Aviv. (Christophe Ena/Pool via REUTERS)
Macron will also travel to Ramallah where he will meet with Palestinian Authority officials.

Macron arrived as Israel and the United States are working to prevent the Gaza War with the Iranian proxy group Hamas, now in its 18th day, from developing into a two-front war that would include the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border.

Possibility of a two-front war

The Biden administration is also concerned that Iranian proxy attacks on Israel could lead to direct military confrontation between Washington and Iran.

At a Foreign Press Center briefing US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that Iranian proxy groups ‘like Hamas and Hizballah and these militia groups in Iraq and in Syria” have over the weekend attacked “some of our facilities and our troops as well as our diplomats.”

‘I can tell you that we are certainly not blind at all to what Iran is doing,” Kirby said.

Content retrieved from: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-769869.