The Minister firmly cemented Frances’s support for Israel, while imploring not to escalate fighting in the north. 

By Gil Tanenbaum, TPS

Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met on Sunday with the visiting French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna.

Cohen told Colonna about the dangers posed by the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah saying, “Hezbollah endangers the security of Lebanon and that of the entire region. If this threat is not removed diplomatically, we will not hesitate to take military action.”

Cohen said that the two discussed preventing war in the north by “distancing Hezbollah from the border with Israel, in accordance with UN Resolution 1701.”

“The fight against Iranian-funded terrorist organizations is not only in the interest of Israel,” he added, “but of the entire Western world.”

Minister Colonna said that in their meeting she, “reiterated the attachment of the French to the security of Israel in the face of terrorism, the urgency of a humanitarian truce in Gaza for the release of hostages and humanitarian access, and the importance of everything to do to avoid an escalation with Lebanon.”

Colonna, however, did not clarify what she meant by “everything to do.”

The French Foreign Minister remarked on the sexual violations enacted on victims of the Hamas October 7 attack, as reports increase about how the terrorists savaged people, both men and women, both the living and the dead.

“Neither silence nor denial: atrocious sexual violence was perpetrated by the terrorists of October 7,” she said. “They must be universally recognized, firmly condemned, and their perpetrators severely punished.”

Colonna heard what she described as, “Chilling testimonies from women involved in this cause.”

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French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna: “There will not be a better accord to the one, which is on the table.” 

By Debbie Reiss, World Israel News

France’s newly appointed foreign minister on Tuesday warned that “the window of opportunity will close in a few weeks” to revive the tattered nuclear deal with Iran, saying there was no better accord for the Islamic Republic than the one currently on the table.

Catherine Colonna further warned in a speech to French parliamentarians that the upcoming midterm elections in the U.S. will all but end any hopes of closing a deal.

“Time is passing. Tehran must realize this,” Colonna said, according to remarks carried by the Reuters news agency.

“The window of opportunity will close in a few weeks. There will not be a better accord to the one which is on the table.”

She charged Iran with employing delaying tactics and disregarding previous agreements so that it could continue enriching uranium, and warned that the regime was hurtling towards becoming a threshold nuclear arms state.

Last week, U.S. special envoy for Iran Robert Malley warned that it “would take a matter of weeks” for Iran to have enough fissile material for a bomb.

According to Malley, Iran had added more demands that “have nothing to do with the nuclear deal, things that they’ve wanted in the past.”

“The discussion that really needs to take place right now is not so much between us and Iran, although we’re prepared to have that; it’s between Iran and itself, that they need to come to a conclusion about whether they are now prepared to come back into compliance with the deal, if we’re prepared to do the same, and we’ve said we are,” he said.

Washington’s assessment, Malley said, is that Iran has not yet decided on a deal. “Whether they are interested or not, they’re going to have to decide sooner or later because at some point the deal will be a thing of the past.”

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