The flags of Palestine and Lebanon are present in large numbers on Republic Square. Thousands of people gathered this Tuesday evening in Paris, responding to the call to demonstrate by the “Emergency Palestine” collective broadcast Monday evening on social networks.
“Stop the genocide,” the organizers of the rally repeated several times, from a stage set up at the foot of the central statue. According to the Paris police headquarters, 2,500 people were present. Shortly after 8 p.m., several dozen people launched into a wild demonstration in the adjacent streets, according to independent journalist Luc Auffret present on site.
This demonstration comes two days after a strike attributed by Hamas to Israel on the town of Deir al-Balah, located in the center of the Gaza Strip. According to the Civil Defense of the Palestinian enclave, this shot caused four deaths in the grounds of the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, sheltering displaced people. The Israeli army, for its part, claimed to have carried out a strike on a Hamas “command center”.
Videos showing a fire, shared on social media by people claiming it was the aftermath of the strike on the hospital grounds but which could not be independently authenticated, were widely criticized. widely distributed on social networks on Monday. In its call to demonstrate, the “Urgence Palestine” collective attached a screenshot of these images. “No more words… Let’s shout together stop genocin,” writes the collective.
This gathering also comes against a backdrop of extreme tensions in the Middle East, where Israel is waging a simultaneous war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. As part of these military operations, the IDF fired shots at peacekeepers at the end of last week and triggered a diplomatic outcry.
It is still in this burning context that Emmanuel Macron pronounced a sentence in the Council of Ministers which caused a reaction this Tuesday. “Mr. Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a UN decision, therefore he should not free himself from UN decisions,” he declared according to our information.
“A reminder to the President of France: it was not the UN resolution that established the State of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the War of Independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were survivors of the Holocaust – particularly of the Vichy regime in France,” the Israeli Prime Minister responded in a press release released immediately.
