Emmanuel Macron spoke on Tuesday of “intense discussions” that will “push forward” the release of hostages held by Hamas after the mother of a French-Israeli woman, Mia Shem, pleaded on Tuesday with “world leaders” to release her daughter , kidnapped in Israel on October 7th.
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“I want to be very careful here, you will understand that I do not say more, firstly, not to create disappointed expectations and, above all, not to jeopardize the intense discussions that we are having,” explained the French President during a press conference in Tirana.
“But they are moving forward, we are watching these discussions hour by hour,” he added, emphasizing that France “of course has contacts with the Israeli authorities,” but also with “intermediate powers friendly to Hamas, in order to secure the release of our son reach.” Hostages and all hostages.
He assured the family of Mia Shem, of whom the Palestinian Islamist organization released a video on Monday, and all relatives of those missing since the October 7 attack of his “support” and “affection.”
“We are in the process of doing everything in our power to achieve this release,” he stressed.
While US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have announced that they will visit Israel and the region this week, and Egypt is organizing a summit on Saturday on “the future of the Palestinian cause,” the French leader has declared that in the Middle East it will only go if there is a “useful agenda and very concrete measures”.
“I will continue consultations and discussions, but my wish is to be able to go there when we can reach a concrete agreement, either on non-escalation or on humanitarian issues,” he said. This could happen “maybe in the next few days, maybe in the next few weeks.”
Emmanuel Macron was also asked during his visit to Albania about the attack the day before in Brussels that killed two Swedes, and Friday’s attack in Arras, northern France, that killed a teacher. He estimated that “all European states.” “were vulnerable” to the return of “Islamist terrorism.”
“In a constitutional state it will never be possible to have a system in which the terrorist threat is completely eliminated,” he warned, calling for the creation of a “vigilance society.”
“We all have a vulnerability. “It is what belongs to democracies and constitutional states, where there are individuals who can decide at any time to do the worst,” he said.
While the authorities face criticism after the Arras attack, especially from the right and far-right, about a form of impotence on the part of the state, particularly its ability to expel radicalized foreigners, Emmanuel Macron assured that he had “not seen any such”. “Failure” in the security services.
He defended the counterterrorism measures taken since his election in 2017 as “a model that allows us to be as safe as possible outside of the state of emergency” because “we cannot live with a permanent state of emergency.” Emergency’.