France's defense chief pushes for 3 goals on Israel visit

PARIS — Seeking a greater role in efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza and to prevent a regional escalation, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu traveled to Israel on Monday for a series of meetings with the country’s leaders. Lecornu arrived in Tel Aviv just as the European foreign ministers gathered for a summit in Brussels called on the Israeli government to accept the two-state solution.

Lecornu had first made a solidarity visit to Israel in mid-November after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. Before that, the last such visit took place in the year 2000.

When French President Emmanuel Macron took office in 2017, he kept his distance from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to a diplomatic source who worked under the last four presidents (Chirac, Sarkozy, Hollande, Macron), he avoided being associated with the failure of the 2016 Paris Conference for Peace organized by former President Francois Hollande. Unlike other French presidents, who had closer connections to Israel and to the Jewish people, Macron invested considerable diplomatic efforts into assisting Lebanon, especially after the Beirut port explosion in 2020, and in building up France’s relations with Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The Oct. 7 attack changed everything, with 41 French citizens killed that day in the south of Israel and several kidnapped. Currently, amid the estimated 136 hostages held in Gaza, there are three French-Israelis. Macron needed to engage personally in the efforts to release the hostages. He also took the lead in Europe on bringing humanitarian aid to the Strip, convening an international conference at the beginning of November in Paris. Since then, Macron has been leading European calls for a humanitarian pause that would lead to a full cease-fire and ending the fighting.