Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday (October 5, 2024) slammed French President Emmanuel Macron for calling for a halt to arms supplies to Israel, which is fighting wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

“As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilised countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side. Yet, President Macron and other Western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel. Shame on them,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office. 

Mr. Netanyahu said Israel was fighting a war on several fronts against groups backed by arch-foe Iran. 

“Is Iran imposing an arms embargo on Hezbollah, on the Huthis, on Hamas and on its other proxies? Of course not,” he said. All three groups are backed by Tehran and form part of its “axis of resistance” against Israel. 

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Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, on September 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran on Friday (September 27, 2024) that Israel will strike if it is hit first and warned that his country can reach any part of the cleric-run state as he vowed to fight on in Gaza.

“I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran. If you strike us, we will strike you,” Mr. Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly.

“There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that’s true of the entire Middle East.”

Delegates, including from Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, exited the room as Mr. Netanyahu took the rostrum for his address amid a mix of cheers and angry yells.

“After I heard the lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium, I decided to come here and set the record straight,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the start of his speech.

Ahead of his speech, protesters gathered outside Netanyahu’s hotel in New York to demand an end to the violence in Gaza and Lebanon.

‘Deadliest period’

On Wednesday (September 25, 2024), the United States, France and other allies unveiled a 21-day truce proposal, after President Joe Biden and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

The White House has said that the call for a ceasefire had been “coordinated” with Israel, but Netanyahu’s office on Thursday (September 26, 2024) said that the Prime Minister has not responded to the proposal.

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“It is an American-French proposal, which the prime minister has not even responded to,” said a statement from Netanyahu’s office, adding that he had ordered the army “to continue the fighting with full force.”

Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in a deadly exchange of cross-border fire since the Iran-backed group’s Palestinian ally, Hamas, attacked Israel on October 7.

Mr. Netanyahu vowed Friday that “Hamas has got to go” and would have no role in the reconstruction of Gaza as he vowed to fight until “total victory.”

Since Monday, Israel has shifted its focus from Gaza to its northern front with Lebanon where heavy bombing has killed 700 people and sparked an exodus of around 118,000 people.

Mr. Netanyahu said Israel would continue Lebanon strikes “until we meet our objectives.”

The U.N. said Friday (September 27, 2024) that a “catastrophic” intensification of Israeli attacks targeting Hezbollah militants had left Lebanon facing its “deadliest period… in a generation.”

The Israeli strikes have brought the overall death toll in Lebanon to more than 1,500 people killed in nearly a year of clashes, according to Lebanese authorities.

That toll surpasses the 1,200 mostly civilians killed during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, which also killed around 160 people in Israel, most of them soldiers.