For his first intervention on Tuesday before the UN Security Council, Stéphane Séjourné once again defended a two-state solution to end the war between Israel and Hamas. “We need a Palestinian state,” pleaded the new Minister of Foreign Affairs.
France “is a friend of Israel as it is a friend of the Palestinian people” and in this context “we must tell everyone the difficult things”, he declared during a ministerial meeting of the Council which he chaired, France taking over the presidency in January.
The same capital for two states
“So I must tell Israel, which knows the friendship of the French people, that we need a Palestinian state, that violence against the Palestinian people, in particular that of extremist settlers, must stop, and that international law is essential to everyone,” he insisted.
“We know the parameters of the solution: two States, living side by side, in peace and security within secure and recognized borders, based on the lines of 1967, and both having Jerusalem as their capital” , he added, while the Israeli government refuses to discuss a “two-state solution”.
“It is not up to Israel or anyone else to decide for the Palestinians how they will be governed tomorrow, nor the extent of their sovereignty,” insisted the minister. “We must also think now about the future of Gaza. It is not up to Israel to decide the fate of the Palestinian populations of Gaza. Gaza is Palestinian land and it is up to the Palestinian Authority, which we support, to be able to exercise its full authority there,” he said.
Paris defends “Israel’s right to live in peace”
Addressing Palestinian representatives at the same time, Stéphane Séjourné assured that France would continue “to fight terrorism with firmness and determination, that there can be no ambiguity about Israel’s right to live in peace. and in security and to exercise their right to self-defense in the face of terrorism.”
The war in the Gaza Strip was sparked by the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to a count based on official Israeli data. . The Jewish state has vowed to “annihilate” Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, and launched a vast military operation which killed 25,490 Palestinians, the vast majority women, children and adolescents, according to the Ministry of Health. Hamas.