France pledges $108m aid to Lebanon as PM Mikati seeks to expand army

France has pledged to provide 100 million euros ($108m) to support Lebanon as President Emmanuel Macron said “massive aid” was needed for the country, where Israeli attacks have displaced more than a million people.

Speaking at an international conference on Thursday, Macron condemned Israel for continuing its military offensive in Lebanon and reiterated his call for a ceasefire.

“The destruction is there. The victims are there. More violence is there. And we cannot accept this,” he said.

Macron was hosting ministers and officials from more than 70 countries and international organisations, including the European Union and regional partners, in the French capital, Paris, to raise donations for the cash-strapped Lebanese government.

French organisers hoped the financial pledges would meet the $400m that the United Nations says is urgently needed.

The head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, wrote on X that he would ask for further support so that the organisation can remain “a key humanitarian responder and a stabilising force” with its work to aid millions of refugees across the region.

France also aims to strengthen Lebanon’s armed forces so they can “deploy more broadly and efficiently” in the country’s south as part of a potential deal that could see Hezbollah withdraw its forces from the border.

Speaking alongside Marcron, acting Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his government had decided to recruit more troops and could deploy 8,000 soldiers as part of a plan to implement a ceasefire and UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution, which calls for the army to be deployed in southern Lebanon.

He added that Lebanon would need international financial support to equip and train the army.

US absent from Paris aid summit

A political breakthrough in the conflict in Lebanon, which has so far killed more than 2,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, appears remote due to the absence of key players at the conference.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been on a regional tour to press for an end to fighting in both Gaza and Lebanon, skipped the Paris meeting, instead sending a deputy.

Reporting from Paris, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith said while France knows that “the only real influence on the Israelis in terms of a ceasefire is from the US, the French government want to show that they can still be effective brokers in the Middle East even though their power is waning”.

Smith added that while dozens of countries and international organisations were represented, only the more junior and ministerial-level officials had been sent to attend.

Abdullah al-Arian, associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, said refocusing the conversation on aid posed the danger of shifting the attention from the scale of the ongoing conflict.

“What should be the focus of the international community is bringing an end to the conflict, as opposed to accepting vast sums of money,” al-Arian said.

“Cutting off arms [to Israel] is the bare minimum, but there has to be a concerted effort through bodies like the Security Council, which has not even taken up this question because there’s an expectation that the US will veto any attempt to stop Israel’s war on Lebanon.”

Men walk on the rubble at a site damaged in Israeli attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs, on October 24, 2024 [Ahmad Al-Kerdi/Reuters]

Lebanese army under fire

As France hosted its conference, an Israeli air strike killed three Lebanese soldiers on the outskirts of the village of Yater, in southern Lebanon.

There was no immediate comment on the strike from the Israeli military, which has previously said it is not operating against the Lebanese army.

Since September 29, a total of 13 Lebanese soldiers have been killed.

Armed and trained by the US, the Lebanese army has little sway on the ground in Hezbollah’s strongholds in southern Lebanon. It recruits from across Lebanon’s sectarian communities and has been seen as a guarantor of peace since the 1975-90 civil war.

Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from Hasbaiyya in southern Lebanon, said the Lebanese army is not fighting the Israeli military.

“What they are doing is providing support services for the Civil Defence or the emergency services,” he said. “They are trying to help the civilian population and it is in that role that they have been attacked.”

“This is a very serious incident for the Lebanese army,” Khan added.

The Lebanese army’s deployment to the south was a key part of UNSC resolution 1701 that ended a 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. The Paris meeting was set to reiterate that resolution 1701 should be the pedoman for a cessation of the current hostilities.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told his Israeli counterpart on Wednesday that Washington had concerns about strikes against the Lebanese armed forces and urged Israel to take steps to ensure the safety of the Lebanese army and peacekeepers from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), who have been repeatedly attacked by Israel.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies