(Villers-Cotterêts) “We are afraid of a new Gaza in Lebanon”, was moved on Friday 19e summit of the Francophonie Lebanese Minister of Information Ziad Makary, who described the constant bombing of Lebanon by Israel as “sickening”.
“We always think that there is a little hope on the diplomatic side because Lebanon is bombed every day. Beirut is bombed every day, every night, for 24 hours. The Bekaa, Mount Lebanon, the South,” declared the minister on the first day of this summit in Villers-Cotterêts, a small town located 60 kilometers north of Paris.
“We are counting a lot on France. Much more than in other countries. We are also counting a lot on the Franco-American initiative which was prepared in New York”, also supported by “the European Union, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Great Britain,” he listed.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib revealed this week that Israel and Hezbollah had accepted last week at the UN General Assembly the proposal from Paris and Washington for a 21-year ceasefire. days between the two belligerents, just before Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the pro-Iranian Shiite militia, in a strike on Beirut.
And Ziad Makary condemned the “criminal attitude” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“He assassinated Ismail Haniyeh (the leader of Hamas) while he was negotiating a ceasefire. And he assassinated Hassan Nasrallah while he was negotiating a ceasefire. So, he knew what was going to happen,” which Lebanon finds, according to him, “unacceptable.”
“It dragged an entire country and perhaps the entire region into a war that will never end,” he lamented in an interview with AFP.
“As a Lebanese, […] how can we live with 2000 victims, 10,000 injured and 1,200,000 displaced people in Lebanon in one week? It’s sickening,” said the Minister of Information, who also described the attitude of the United States as “unacceptable and not Catholic.”
Washington, which is pushing for a ceasefire, has at the same time validated a new package of American military aid to Israel, worth $8.7 billion, the Israeli authorities announced last week.