(CBS, KYMA/KECY) – French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about aid to Gaza.
When asked if France is exploring avenues to bring aid to Gaza, Minister Barrot said, “What’s happening in Gaza right now is appalling. Gaza is now in the brink of a full catastrophe, and we’ve been working out, over the months, to try and relief the sufferings of the Palestinian people.”
“We actually have 52 tons of humanitarian help stuck in El-Arish in Egypt, a few kilometers away from Gaza. So we’re exploring all options to seize the opportunity offered by the Israeli government by opening the skies of Gaza, but we call for immediate, unhindered, and massive access by all means of humanitarian help to those who need it most,” Barrot added.
Brennan followed up by asking if Israel had responded to their calls, and Barrot said:
“We have, with the European Union, started tough discussions with the Israeli government, who have made first commitments that have not been fulfilled yet. In the next few days, the European Commission will make clear what our expectations are. We expect the Israeli government to stop the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that has caused bloodbath in humanitarian help distribution lines in Gaza. We expect them to pay the two billion euros they owe to the Palestinian Authority and to lift the financial blockage that is now preventing the Palestinian Authority to implement its most basic missions. We also expect the Israeli government to bring to a stop its latest settlement projects, the E1 projects with 3,400 housing units that might split the West Bank in two pieces and prevent the emergence of a political, a two state solution. But what we call for is, of course, the immediate ceasefire, the liberation of whole hostages of Hamas, that needs to be disarmed. And the entry, the massive entry, of humanitarian help in Gaza.”
During the interview, Brennan and Barrot talked about Iran, with Brennan saying France, along with other European countries, talking about “what remains of Iran’s nuclear program” after the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran last month.
This prompted Brennan to ask Barrot if he was concerned if Iran may “covertly attempt to make a weapon and the world won’t know” following the bombings, to which Barrot said:
“This is still a risk that we are facing, and alongside Germany and the UK, we have been very clear, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and we’ve been, over the past few months, reaching out to the Iranian authority in close coordination with U.S. authorities in order to express what our expectations are. Ten years ago, we reached a deal on the nuclear program that allowed for a significant rollback of Iranian nuclear capacity. Of course, things has changed. Still then, and since then, Iran has violated all commitments it had taken at the time of signing this agreement. We now want a more comprehensive agreement that would encompass both the nuclear dimension of Iranian destabilization activities, but also it’s the ballistic component, as well as the regional destabilization activities that Iran has been conducting…unless a new and robust and durable and verifiable agreement is reached by the end of the summer, France, Germany and the UK will have no other choice but to reapply the global embargoes that were lifted ten years ago when the nuclear agreement with Iran was signed, embargoes on weapons, on nuclear equipment, and on banking.”
To watch more of Brennan’s full interview with Barrot, click here.