Israel summons French ambassador over Le Drian's 'apartheid' remarks
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian’s comments were “far from the reality."
Israel summoned the French ambassador on Thursday in protest over French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian’s statement that the Jewish state’s policies toward the Palestinians risked a “long-lasting apartheid.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi told Ambassador Eric Danon that Le Drian’s comments were “unacceptable, baseless, far from the reality and Israel rejects them out of hand.”
“Israel expects its friends to not express themselves in an irresponsible way,” the statement read, according to The Times of Israel. Ashkenazi called Le Drian’s comments “in effect a prize to extremist elements and terror organizations, first off the Hamas terror organization.”
In an interview on Sunday, Le Drian was commenting on the violent clashes between Jews and Arabs living in Israel’s mixed cities. He said the prospect of a two-state solution “was starting to disappear” and that the “risk of apartheid is high” if Israel continues with its “single-state logic.”
