Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Tuesday criticized a statement by several Western leaders who called for talks and and “deescalation” in Lebanon.
The leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement on Monday expressing their “grave” concern over the “escalating violence in Lebanon” and calling for “meaningful engagement by Israeli and Lebanese representatives to negotiate a sustainable political solution.”
“We strongly support initiatives to facilitate talks and urge for immediate de-escalation,” their statement read. “We call on all parties to act in accordance with international humanitarian law.”
Sa’ar called the statement “a distorted view of reality.”
“On March 2nd, as on October 8th, 2023, Israelis were attacked unprovoked from Lebanese territory by Hezbollah. These are the same Israelis who for an entire year were forced to leave their homes due to relentless Hezbollah fire, yet the statement ignores their suffering,” he said in a post on X.
Noting that Hezbollah had fired some 2,000 missiles, rockets
and drones at Israeli civilians since March 2, when it attacked Israel in solidarity with Iran, Sa’ar asked whether the citizens of the countries that signed the statement would “agree to live under such terror?”
“If these democracies were attacked in this way, would they accept a distorted symmetry between ‘all parties’—equating a democratic state defending its citizens with a terror organization that has taken control over a neighboring state?” Sa’ar asked.
The statement didn’t make any demand from the Lebanese government to stop Hezbollah’s rockets, nor did it demand that Lebanon remove Hezbollah ministers from its government, he noted.
Lebanon’s government promised under the Nov. 2024 ceasefire agreement to remove Hezbollah forces to an area north of the Litani River and to disarm the terror group. Neither happened.
The Israel Defense Forces in recent days began expanding its presence in Lebanese territory “to remove threats and create an additional layer of security for residents of northern Israel,” the army said on Tuesday.
