{"id":29046,"date":"2026-06-02T00:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T00:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/29046\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T00:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T00:51:11","slug":"france-says-nothing-can-justify-scale-and-persistence-of-israels-operations-in-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/29046\/","title":{"rendered":"France says nothing can justify scale and persistence of Israel’s operations in Lebanon"},"content":{"rendered":"

France<\/a>‘s UN envoy slammed the scale and persistence of Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon<\/a>, warning that the offensive risked repeating the mistakes of past occupations.<\/p>\n

Jerome Bonnafont, whose country requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting, said the attacks<\/a> are a “major strategic mistake on Israel’s part”.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing can justify the continuation and scale of its military operations in Lebanon, the thousands of civilian deaths and injuries<\/a>, and the forced displacement of populations, or its ever-deeper occupation of Lebanese territory,\u201d Mr Bonnafont said.<\/p>\n

He blamed Hezbollah<\/a> and its Iranian backers for starting the conflict along the Israeli-Lebanese border, while warning that Israel’s deepening military operations put it at risk of repeating past mistakes and undermining regional stability.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is Hezbollah, supported by Iran, that bears responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities, having dragged Lebanon and the Lebanese people into a war that is not theirs,\u201d Mr Bonnafont said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe condemned this unequivocally, just as we condemn today Hezbollah’s continued attacks against Israeli territory. We recognise Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah’s attacks.”<\/p>\n

Mr Bonnafont added that Israel’s recent actions could revive memories of its former occupation of southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis headlong rush took on a symbolic dimension yesterday by planting its flag on the Beaufort fortress, which served as a base during its occupation of southern Lebanon until 2000,” he told the council. “Israel is returning to a period that many believed was behind us.\u201d<\/p>\n

China’s ambassador<\/a> Fu Cong warned that the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel is now close to existing \u201cin name only\u201d. <\/p>\n

He called on the international community to act urgently before \u201cthe situation slides into an even more dangerous abyss”.<\/p>\n

Responding to France’s criticism, Israel’s UN envoy<\/a> Danny Danon said his country was not seeking to expand the conflict or retain territory in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe left Lebanon, Mr ambassador, in 2000 because we did not want to stay there,\u201d Mr Danon said. \u201cAnd today we do not want to stay there.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, he warned that Israel would continue military operations against Hezbollah if attacks on Israeli territory persisted.<\/p>\n

“Israel will act wherever necessary to defend its citizens, south of the Litani or north of the Litani,” he said. “If our children are running to shelters, Hezbollah’s leadership will not enjoy safe haven \u2014 not in southern Lebanon, not in Beirut.”<\/p>\n

Lebanon’s UN ambassador Ahmad Arafa said Israeli officials had made their intentions clear through calls to expand military operations and occupy more Lebanese territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are evident in the statements of its officials and their calls for the need to expand their aggression and occupy wider swathes of Lebanese territory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Arafa said a lack of accountability had encouraged further breaches and that \u201cemboldens the perpetrator to commit the very same crimes time and time again”.<\/p>\n

Before the meeting, US President Donald Trump<\/a> said he had personally intervened to avert an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, hours after Israeli officials threatened to attack the Hezbollah stronghold again.<\/p>\n

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Mr Trump said he had held a \u201cvery productive\u201d phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> and persuaded Israel to pull back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be no troops going to Beirut and any troops that are on their way have already been turned back,\u201d Mr Trump wrote. \u201cIsrael and Hezbollah have agreed to de-escalate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tension surged along the border a day before Lebanon and Israel were set to begin a fourth round of US-hosted direct negotiations on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Earlier on Monday, Israel’s government ordered strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs after Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, including towards the outskirts of Haifa, and Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into southern Lebanon than at any point since 2000.<\/p>\n

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the orders were issued in response to \u201crepeated violations of the ceasefire and attacks against our cities and citizens\u201d.<\/p>\n

Martha Pobee, UN assistant secretary general, told the Security Council that Israeli military activity north of the Blue Line had expanded significantly in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Israel … forces have expanded their presence north of the Blue Line, with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reporting extensive military activity, including air strikes, artillery fire, logistics movements and engineering works, throughout its area of operations,\u201d Ms Pobee said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnifil has also observed widespread demolitions of buildings in villages in the vicinity of the Blue Line.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that on May 30, Unifil recorded 992 projectiles fired by Israeli forces, \u201cthe highest number since a cessation of hostilities came into effect on April 17″.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France‘s UN envoy slammed the scale and persistence of Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon, warning that the offensive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,426,63,425,589,588,657,2613],"class_list":["post-29046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-france","tag-hezbollah","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-standard","tag-story","tag-un","tag-us-bureau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}