Tensions between Benjamin Netanyahu and Emmanuel Macron were already high, but on Tuesday, October 15, they were ratcheted up a notch. Having sparked the Israeli prime minister's fury the day before the October 7 commemorations by calling, on the radio station France Inter, for countries "to stop delivering arms [to Israel] for fighting in Gaza," the French president clashed with the Israeli prime minister over the United Nations and the creation of Israel.
"Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a UN decision," Macron said at a cabinet meeting, according to comments reported by the meeting's participants, as the war in Gaza and the fighting underway in Lebanon were being discussed. This comment was a reference to Resolution 181, adopted in November 1947 by the UN General Assembly, providing for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. "And therefore, this is not the time to break away from UN decisions," the French president reportedly stressed, in an allusion to strikes that targeted the UN mission deployed in southern Lebanon (the UNIFIL), an organization which Israel has demanded be redeployed a little further north, so it can carry out its offensive against Hezbollah.
'A historical and a political error'
Netanyahu's response was scathing. "It was not a UN decision that established the State of Israel but the victory that was achieved in the War of Independence with the blood of our heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, including from the Vichy regime in France," retorted the Israeli prime minister in a statement.
He also received support from the president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF): "The remarks attributed to the president of the Republic, if confirmed, are both a historical and a political error," wrote Yonathan Arfi, in a post on X: "To suggest that the creation of the State of Israel was the result of a political decision by the UN is to ignore the century-long history of Zionism."
Even before the controversy broke out, Macron and Netanyahu had spoken on the phone for over an hour, only to, once again, come away from it noting their differences. According to the Elysée, the French president had insisted on the "absolute necessity of concluding a ceasefire, without further delay, in Lebanon." The president was said to have "expressed his indignation at the wounding of several peacekeepers by Israeli forces in Naqoura, and urgently requested that Israel put an end to this unjustifiable targeting." Instead, the Israeli prime minister reportedly opposed any "unilateral" ceasefire in Lebanon.
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