Saying Israel is ”not alone” in its efforts to block Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, French President Nicholas Sarkozy said on Monday that an Iran with nuclear weapons is ”unacceptable” and promised his country will always defend the Jewish state against existential threats.
”Anyone trying to destroy Israel will find France blocking the way,” he said in an emotional speech to the Knesset in Jerusalem.
”The French people will always be at your side when you are threatened,” he said. ”Those who disgracefully call for Israel’s destruction will always, always, find France blocking their path.”
Israel regards Iran is its prime existential threat, given Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme and comments by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders that Israel should be wiped off the map.
The French president, in Israel on a three-day visit, told the assembled lawmakers and other guests at the legislature that a viable, democratic and modern Palestinian state could best guarantee Israel’s security, comments he first made shortly after his arrival on Sunday night.
And, as he did on Sunday night, he also criticised Israel’s settlement policy, saying peace is not possible unless Israel stops building settlements in the West Bank and unless Jerusalem is recognised as the capital of an Israel and of a Palestinian state.
The bulk of Sarkozy’s speech, however, was devoted to praising Israel, which he said is for every Jew, ”the only place in the world where everyone is certain that Jews will never be forced to wear a yellow patch, where Jews will not be banned from travelling on buses, visiting the cinema and theatre and engaging in certain professions and will not be forced to live in neighbourhoods for Jews only or visit restaurants, stores and schools for Jews only”.
But, he said, France also wants to be the friend of the Palestinian people, and, as a friend, he had to say that the rights of the Palestinian people could not be restored without accepting the rights of the Jewish people and through calls for Israel’s destruction.
Sarkozy, accompanied by his wife, Carla, arrived at the Knesset from a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Centre in Jerusalem.
The president’s praise for Israel in his Knesset speech marks a definite upswing in relations between the two countries. Although France was friendly toward Israel in its early years, supplying it with arms in the 1950s, ties between the two countries cooled after the 1967 Middle East War, when Israel launched a pre-emptive strike at its Arab neighbours despite a warning from then French president Charles de Gaulle not to do so.
France is home to Europe’s largest Jewish community — between 500 000 and 600 000, according to various estimates.
Sarkozy, whose entourage includes ministers, businessmen and French Jewish leaders, arrived in Israel on Sunday evening and met President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
He is scheduled to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem on Tuesday.
He also plans to meet the parents of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Gazan militants two years ago in a cross-border raid and still held captive. Shalit has French citizenship. — Sapa-dpa