This Thursday, November 7, 2024, AFP announced that two French gendarmes were arrested by Israeli police officers in Éléona, on territory managed by France in East Jerusalem. According to initial information, French gendarmes had refused access to Israeli police officers before the arrival of the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Nöel Barrot.
Minister Jean-Noël Barrot denounced an “unacceptable situation” and refused to enter the Eléona pilgrimage site in the presence of Israeli police officers. This site, also called the Church of the Pater Noster, was given to France in 1868 by Princess Heloïse de la Tour d'Auvergne, who had a monastery built there.
After this diplomatic incident, France will summon the Israeli ambassador to France, announced AFP.
Three other French territories
But the Eléona is not the only place under French management in the holy city. We also find the Tomb of the Kings, excavated by French archaeologists from 1863 and acquired by the Pereire brothers, bankers, in 1871. They gave it to the French State in 1886 “to preserve it for science and veneration of the faithful children of Israel.
The monastery of Abu Gosh was given to France in 1873 by Sultan Abdulaziz, to compensate for the loss of the church of Saint George of Lod, given to the Orthodox Greeks two years earlier.
And finally the Sainte-Anne church, the very first French possession, offered to Emperor Napoleon III by Abdulmecid I in 1856 in gratitude for French intervention during the Crimean War which had just ended. These French possessions were consolidated by international agreements throughout the 20th century.
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Possessions that accumulate tensions
The episode of arrest of French gendarmes at Eléona this Thursday, November 7, 2024 is not an unprecedented event. These holy sites are located in East Jerusalem, the part of the city which is not under Israeli but Jordanian sovereignty.
Thus, the presence of Israeli security forces on these places has sparked several controversies over recent decades. “You want me to go back on my plane?” : we remember the legendary bloodshed of Jacques Chirac in 1996 in front of Sainte-Anne church, when the presence of a large Israeli security service prevented him from greeting the Palestinians who extended their hands to him.
Twenty-four years later, it was during Emmanuel Macron's visit, to the same place and for essentially the same reasons, that an altercation took place and provoked the anger of the French president, as Le Parisien recalls.
The Tomb of the Kings also crystallizes other tensions between France and Israel. Closed to visitors since the early 2000s, the venue reopened in 2019, and visitors must register with the French consulate and pay for their ticket. A situation badly experienced by certain Orthodox Jews, for whom it is a place of worship. According to Le Parisien, an association linked to the Israeli Chief Rabbinate would also contest the French acquisition of this holy place.
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