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Western leaders on Monday increased pressure on Israel to exercise restraint after Iran’s drone and missile attack, as Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet prepared to meet again to discuss how to respond.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the international community should do “everything possible to avoid flare-ups” and “try to convince Israel that we should not respond with escalation, but rather by isolating Iran.”
British Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron said the UK had made clear it would not take part in any retaliatory strikes.
He echoed US President Joe Biden’s call for Israel to “win the victory” after the Jewish state and its allies shot down nearly all projectiles fired at the country by Iran and its proxies on Saturday.
“We are saying very strongly that we do not support a retaliatory strike. We don’t think they should make one,” Cameron said in an interview with the BBC Today plan.
He argued that Israel should instead redouble its efforts to free the 134 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.
“The right thing to do, the hardest thing to do now, is not to escalate the situation further, but to bring the focus back to bringing the hostages home,” he added.
Macron and Cameron’s comments came as Israel’s five-man war cabinet was due to reconvene at 2pm local time to continue discussions on how to respond to the Iranian barrage.
Tehran launched the attack on Saturday in retaliation for an Israeli attack on its consulate in Damascus this month that killed several senior Iranian commanders.
A person familiar with the discussions told the Financial Times on Sunday that it was clear that Israel would respond to the Iranian barrage, but added that the government had yet to decide the scale and timing of the response.
Iran’s salvo was the first time it attacked Israel directly from its own territory and brought the Middle East closer to a full-blown war between its two strongest military powers.
The region has been engulfed in hostilities since the conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted last year.
An Israeli military official said the scale of the barrage, which involved 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles, was increasing and that the army had presented a number of possible responses to the Israeli leadership.
Extremists in Netanyahu’s coalition with ultra-religious and far-right groups have called for a “crushing” response to the Iranian attack.
However, others argued that the relatively limited impact of the attacks, which seriously injured a young girl and caused minor damage to two military bases, meant Israel could afford to adopt a more measured response.
Benny Gantz, a former general and opposition politician who joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet after war with Hamas broke out last year, said on Sunday that Israel would respond “in a way and at a time that suits us.”
He added that Israel should take advantage of the fact that several other countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Jordan, helped it bring down the Iranian barrage.
“Yesterday the world clearly sided with Israel in the face of danger. . . This is a strategic achievement, which we must exploit for Israel’s security,” she said.
“This event is not over: the strategic alliance and regional cooperation system that we have built and passed the significant test must be strengthened right now,” he added.
Gantz also said Israel should not let the confrontation with Iran distract it from its war with Hamas in Gaza and its attempts to force the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group to withdraw from its northern border with Lebanon.
“We must remember that we have not yet completed our tasks, primarily the return of the hostages and the elimination of the threat between the inhabitants of the north and the south,” he said.
The Israeli army said Sunday evening that it would recall two brigades of reservists “for operational activities on the Gaza front.”
Israel has pledged to launch an operation in Rafah, which it considers Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza. But it has come under intense pressure from the United States not to carry out an operation in the city without evacuating more than a million Palestinians who are taking refuge there after fleeing fighting elsewhere in the enclave.
The Kremlin said on Monday it was “extremely concerned about the escalation of tension in the region” after Iran’s attack on Israel.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said Russia called on “all countries in the region to show restraint” and resolve the conflict diplomatically. “Further escalation is not in anyone’s interest,” he said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry had previously said that Iran had the “right to defend itself” after an Israeli attack on its embassy in Syria.
Additional reporting by Max Seddon in Riga