Second visit in two months. French Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu will meet on Monday with the families of Hamas hostages in Israel and then meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and several members of the military cabinet to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip and the risks of escalation in the region.
Discussions will focus “on the situation in the Gaza Strip, efforts to free French hostages and missing persons, the protection of civilians and humanitarian support provided by France,” as well as efforts to prevent “regional escalation, especially in Lebanon and the Red Sea “where Yemen’s Houthi rebels are launching attacks on ships, the French minister’s office said on Sunday.
The fate of the French hostages
This is the second visit by the French Armed Forces Minister to Israel since the start of the war, sparked by the October 7 attack on Israeli soil by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. During the previous tour, Sebastien Lecornu visited, in addition to Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He later also visited the helicopter carrier USS Dixmood, moored in Egypt near the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian civilians are being treated, and then in southern Lebanon, where 700 French soldiers are stationed from the deployed UN mission UNIFIL, which acts as a buffer between Lebanon and Lebanon. Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron recently called for “negotiations for the release” of Hamas hostages to be resumed “again and again.” About 250 people were kidnapped in the attack, including about a hundred who were freed in late November, leaving about 1,140 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on Israeli casualties. Three Frenchmen are still “missing” and are believed to be hostages in Palestinian territory. According to Hamas, on the 107th day of the war in the Gaza Strip, the death toll exceeded 25,000 people.
Source: Le Parisien
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