Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi called for taking steps to avoid Israel's planned ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, which has already been devastated by indiscriminate airstrikes, killing over 6,000 people, around half of them children, in less than 20 days.
At a joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, el-Sissi said the pair had discussed the "many, many civilian casualties" that could result from an Israeli ground invasion.
El-Sissi pointed to the "around 6,000" civilian fatalities already reported by Hamas authorities as a result of over two weeks of Israeli strikes, "half of whom are children."
Meanwhile, for his part, Macron claimed that "France does not practice double standards," pushing back against criticism of his government's response to Israeli attacks, which mostly targeted civilians following Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.
"International law applies to everyone and France carries the universal values of humanism," Macron said during a joint news conference in Cairo, responding to claims by Arab leaders who have accused Western nations of overlooking harm to Palestinians.
"All lives are equal, all victims deserve our compassion and our lasting commitment to a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East," said Macron, who has radically sided with Israel and never condemned the country's violence against civilians, despite the fact that it targeted hospitals, churches, mosques, refugee camps, ambulances and other civilian infrastructure.
Previously on Wednesday, Jordan's King Abdullah told Macron that ending the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is an urgent necessity and warned there could otherwise be an "explosion" in the wider Middle East.
In a royal court statement, the monarch told Macron Israel should be pressured by global powers to stop its unrelenting bombing campaign in Hamas-ruled Gaza and end its siege of the densely populated enclave of 2.3 million Palestinians.
Gaza's Health Ministry said on Wednesday at least 6,546 Palestinians, including 2,704 children, have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since a cross-border Hamas operation into Israel in which 1,400 Israelis were killed.
Macron, who arrived in Amman after holding talks on Tuesday with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, discussed with Abdullah ways to end the conflict on the basis of a future Palestinian state coexisting with Israel, the statement said.
World powers say they back the "two-state solution" of Palestinian independence in Israeli-occupied territories, though U.S.-brokered negotiations toward that end have been frozen for almost a decade with Israeli-Palestinian violence worsening.
"The continuation of the (Gaza) war will lead to an explosion of the situation in the region," Abdullah was quoted as telling Macron, echoing worries among regional leaders the war could expand well beyond Gaza.
In Israel, Macron warned against the risks of a broader Middle East conflict and also said the fight against Hamas "must be without mercy but not without rules" – an allusion to civilian deaths and suffering in besieged Gaza.
The conflict has reawakened long-standing fears in Jordan, home to a large population of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, that a wider conflagration could prompt Israel to eject Palestinians en masse from the occupied West Bank. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation.
"We are against any attempt by Israel to create an exodus of Palestinians or internally displace the inhabitants of Gaza," King Abdullah said, according to the royal court statement.
Jordan, which borders the West Bank to the west, absorbed the bulk of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of their homes during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948.
Macron said that France was sending a navy ship to support the Gaza Strip's hospitals, which are at risk of collapsing under Israel's bombing and siege.
The ship would "leave Toulon in the next 48 hours," the French leader said during a joint news conference in Cairo with el-Sissi.
France would also send a planeload of medical equipment to Egypt to be transported into the war-torn Palestinian territory.
