Emmanuel Macron’s reversals on the conflict between Israel and Hamas, first condemning the October 7 attack and recalling Israel’s right to defend itself, then later judging that the Israeli strikes had no “reason » nor “legitimacy”, have sown trouble and incomprehension.
The leader of the Israeli opposition does not hold this against him, for his part, as he affirmed in an interview with the newspaper Le Point this Thursday. “Maybe he felt that since he was supportive from day one he didn’t need to explain it all again. And maybe that was a bit of a mistake. But, fundamentally, I do not doubt his support for our country,” said former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
“De facto, today, civilians are being bombed. These babies, these women, these elderly people are bombed and killed,” said Emmanuel Macron, seeming to denounce the war waged by Israel, before “clarifying” his remarks to the Israeli president himself. “I have no problem when people show sympathy for the children who are killed in Gaza,” Yair Lapid also said. I have sympathy for the children killed in Gaza. Israel does not wage war on children.”
The leader of the opposition also spoke at length about the post-war period, mentioning two essential phases. “The first is the overhaul of the structures of Gaza without Hamas, with an agreement based on the moderate Sunni world and the international community,” detailed the opponent of Netanyahu. “During the second phase, […] we will have to re-discuss or begin to renegotiate the possibility of separating ourselves from the Palestinians,” he continued while remaining very cautious on the question of colonization, particularly in the West Bank and in insisting on the essential conditions of security for the Israeli people. “We need that security, and when we have it, we can discuss the possibility of a two-state solution, which means drawing a new map.”
Yaïr Lapid also declares that it is “impossible” to talk about dismantling at the moment, which for him is a “strategic question”. “Maybe in the future.” At the beginning of November, the politician justified colonization by evoking the “biblical land”.
Netanyahu’s opponent refused to make any comments on the country’s internal political situation, but also spoke about the fight of democracies “against any other form of power”, placing the conflict against Hamas, compared to Daesh, in a fight that goes beyond the religious question. “So I think that democracies have the capacity to defend themselves, but they are always a little behind,” he said, optimistically.