French President Emmanuel Macron calls for an arms embargo on Israel. There is no doubt that it sounds dramatic, but this year is not 1967. According to data from the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between the years 2019-2023 the USA accounted for 69% of total Israeli defense imports, Germany – 30%, and Italy -0.9%. Yes , France and the rest of the world together accounted for 0.1% of Israel’s defense imports.
We all grew up on the stories of how an integral part of Israel’s success in the Six Day War was victory, despite French President Charles de Gaulle turning his back just before the war. This can be compared to the situation where today Israel will find itself in a war with no choice like iron swords, and the US will say that in the name of its interests vis-à-vis the Arab countries – it is imposing an embargo on Israel.
The opposite is true. So it is true that the Biden administration has electoral needs that cause it to delay specific, even sporadic shipments. From the outbreak of the Iron Swords War until June, the US provided Israel with aid amounting to 6.5 billion dollars, according to the Washington Post. For the sake of comparison, the scope of the US’s annual aid to Israel according to the current memorandum of understanding is 3.3 billion dollars and another half a billion dollars for Joint ventures in the field of air defense.
One of my former managers once told me about recycled items that “it’s like reheating macaroni in the microwave”. President Macron reheats a macaroni in the microwave. At the end of May, he managed to take an action that really hurt the State of Israel in general and the defense industries in particular: exclusion from the prestigious Eurosatori exhibition, due to the Rafah maneuver whose security importance has since been proven many times over. In June, the French court decided to overturn the decision, but it was already too late – and the Israeli companies were harmed.
This was a step aimed at Macron’s internal political goals, but in the elections a month later, the center bloc, “Yahed”, under the leadership of the French president received 161 seats. At the same time, the right-wing bloc, led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s “National Union” party, won 142 seats, the center-right “Republicans” party received 48 seats and the remaining 38 seats went to small parties. This meant that the left won the elections, but no party has a majority. Finally, in September Macron agreed to a compromise in which a minority coalition was formed led by Michel Barnier from the moderate right.
And here comes the renewed macaroni heating. A week after the start of the maneuver in Lebanon, Macron on Saturday scored a goal of his own with an interview in which he called for a weapons embargo “to be used for the war in Gaza”. The French president is not a stupid man: he is well aware that the military arm of Hamas, the Az ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, is decisive – and the intensity of the fighting has decreased due to many and varied considerations.
What is behind Macron’s call?
One of the main reasons for this is the drawing of attention to the maneuver in southern Lebanon, a country that is very important for internal French politics. Beyond that, France is a significant economic player in the land of cedars. When Lebanon wanted to extract natural gas from the Kena field in Block 9, which is located north of Israel’s economic waters, it entrusted it to a consortium led by France’s Total. However, the irony occurred in the first week of the war, when at the end of exploration drilling it was discovered that there was no natural gas to be produced.
In the Lebanese arena, the French president understands that there is no pro-Hezbollah sentiment in the West. The opposite is true, the Western countries and the moderate Sunni axis know very well that Hezbollah is the main obstacle on Lebanon’s path to renewed prosperity. Therefore, Macron looks to the day after the war in the Land of the Cedars and wants to be a significant player in the solution, just as Paris was one of the two significant players in the ceasefire of the Second Lebanon War.
Unlike the Eurosatory case, Macron addressed the wrong address at the wrong time. Germany does limit Israel to some extent, but the strength of the maneuver in southern Lebanon indicates beyond any doubt that the IDF has no problem with the IDF. As a result, apparently, the address is on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, in the White House. However, the timing of the French president at the level of American politics is no less bad.
The last Democratic candidate who “succeeded” in getting a lower turnout from the American Jewish community than the national rate was James Cox in 1920 (19% vs. 34%). President Jimmy Carter came close to repeating the “achievement” in 1980, but still received 45% of the Jewish community compared to 41% of all voters. Now, only a month before the election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the polls point to one clear trend: it will be close. very tight
The Democrats still carry with them the trauma of the 2016 election, in which Trump received 3 million votes less than the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton – but won. The Democratic Party will not allow President Joe Biden, even if he thinks about it, to take significant steps against Israel, especially when it comes to the war against Hezbollah. They will not want to risk any vote, including the Jewish one, which could tilt one of the strategic states at the level of the electors to the Republican Party.
Bottom line, Macaron will eat the macaroni he reheated in the microwave. So there were headlines, pushovers, maybe even headlines because this is France. One of the permanent members of the UN Security Council whose position is heard – it always happens loudly due to its international position. However, there is not necessarily a correlation between status and purpose. The French president simply missed the mark. If and when he had taken the exact opposite, arriving in Israel physically, Shows a significant presence and there is no spoon left in the ivory tower in the Elysee Palace – he would have earned much more, in all respects.
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