French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that any forced transfer of people from the southern Gaza city of Rafah would constitute “a war crime,” according to France24.
In a telephone call between the two leaders, Macron also “strongly condemned” Israel’s announcement Friday of the seizure of 800 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank for new settlements, said his office.
Activists say Israel’s declaration that the land in the northern Jordan Valley was now “state land” was the single largest such seizure in decades.
Macron also repeated his opposition to any Israeli military operation to fight Hamas in Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population has taken shelter after months of fierce fighting in the besieged territory.
In the call, Macron told Netanyahu he intended to bring a draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling for “an immediate and lasting ceasefire.”
He urged Israel to immediately open all crossing points into Gaza.
Macron also had talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, during which they discussed the “unjustifiable humanitarian situation in Gaza,” said the Elysee Palace.
Forcing civilians to run the risk of famine was “unjustifiable,” the two leaders said.
They also agreed on the need for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one that “implied the creation of a Palestinian state including Gaza.”
The planned Rafah ground offensive has faced intense international pressure, with warnings it would cause mass civilian casualties and worsen the humanitarian crisis.
However Israel has insisted it is necessary in its campaign to destroy Hamas.
Israel has faced ever greater global opposition to its military campaign as Palestinian civilian deaths have soared and its siege has brought widespread malnutrition and hunger.
The UN Security Council is set to vote Monday on a resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to AP News.
The vote comes after Russia and China vetoed a US-sponsored resolution Friday that would have supported “an immediate and sustained cease-fire” in the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
Many Security Council members are hoping the U.N.’s most powerful body, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security, will demand an end to the war that began when Gaza’s Hamas rulers launched a surprise attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage, AP News reports.
Since then, the Security Council has adopted two resolutions on the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza, but none has called for a cease-fire.
More than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed during the fighting, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.
Gaza also faces a dire humanitarian emergency, with a report from an international authority on hunger warning March 18 that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza and that escalation of the war could push half of the territory’s 2.3 million people to the brink of starvation.