On Thursday, 70 government delegations and 15 international organisations met in Paris to help Lebanon.

“The message [for Israel] is simple: Ceasefire!” France’s foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot told a news conference, reiterating that a Franco-American proposal for a temporary truce was still on the table, reports Reuters.

Barrot said more than $800 million, including $300 million from Washington, had been raised primarily to help up to one million displaced with food, healthcare and education.

A further $200 million would go to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), deemed as the guarantor of internal stability, and also vital to implementing 2006 UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that calls for southern Lebanon to be free of any troops or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state.

“The storm we are currently witnessing is unlike any other, because it carries the seeds of destruction,” Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati told delegates, pleading for more pressure to be put on Israel.

Opening the conference, French President Emmanuel Macron said there must not be a return to past cycles of violence. “More damage, more victims, more strikes will not enable the end of terrorism or ensure security for everyone,” he said.

The Israeli war on Lebanon has killed more than 2,500 and wounded more than 12,000 since 8 October 2023, according to Lebanese health officials.

Israeli carpet-bombing of Dahiya in South Beirut, towns and villages in the south and Beqaa Valley and the north of the country since mid-September has turned more than 1.2 millions into refugees.

On Thursday, Israeli warplanes pounded various parts of Lebanon with strikes against towns and villages in the south of the country, including Khiyam and Dwair, and other towns and villages in the Beqaa Valley.