Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet in Paris this weekend with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Netanyahu is scheduled to leave Israel on Thursday for what is expected to be a two-day visit.
During their phone conversation earlier this week, the two men “sharply condemned Iran’s active participation in harming innocent civilians in Ukraine,” according a communique from the Prime Minister’s Office.
Macron offered his condolences over last Friday’s deadly terror attack in Jerusalem that left seven Israeli Jews dead and three more wounded, which he called “despicable.”
The French leader urged both Israel and the Palestinian Authority not to “feed the spiral of violence” in what has become a routine move by world leaders to create moral equivalence between counter terrorism operations aimed at preventing such attacks, and the efforts of Arab terrorists to murder as many Israeli civilians as possible.
Friday’s attack followed a complex counter terrorism operation in by the IDF, Shin Bet intelligence agents and Israel’s Border Guard Police one day earlier in which nine people were killed in Jenin, a hotbed of terrorism. Most of the dead were armed terrorists, although at least one civilian was killed as well. The attack was carried out on the basis of concrete intelligence indicating a major terror attack by the targeted cell was imminent.
Macron expressed his “availability to contribute to the resumption of dialogue between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” according to a statement from the Elysée Palace.
Macron also “expressed France’s full and complete solidarity with Israel in its fight against terrorism,” and reiterated “France’s unwavering attachment to Israel’s security,” the palace statement said.
