The names rang out from a microphone set up on the corner of the Place de la Bastille in Paris — the site of the former prison. Name. Age. “Assassinated by Israel.” With each name, the crowd repeated the phrase.
At a protest action organized in early September by French human rights groups, it took activists three days to get through the names of the estimated 18,000 children killed in Gaza.
The protest was one of several aimed at putting continued pressure on the French government to take action to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza, recognized as such by a United Nations commission of inquiry earlier this month. On Monday, these activists had at least one of their wishes granted.
After months of anticipation, French president Emmanuel Macron made good on his promise, made this July, to recognize Palestinian statehood during a speech at a high-level UN summit cohosted with Saudi Arabia.
“The time has come. That is why, faithful to my country’s historic commitment to the Middle East, to peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, I declare that France today recognizes the state of Palestine,” Macron said.
France made the move alongside nine other countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, Portugal, and Belgium. But in many ways France has taken the lead on this effort.
Successive French presidents from Charles de Gaulle to François Mitterrand to Jacques Chirac have made attempts to recognize Palestine’s right to exist. In November 1967, French president and World War II liberation hero de Gaulle warned that after the Six Days War, “there can be no solution except through international channels.” Israel’s occupation of neighboring territories, he said, “cannot proceed without oppression, repression, and expulsions, and there is resistance against it, which [Israel] in turn describes as terrorism.”
Socialist president Mitterrand defended the two-state solution in a March 1982 visit to Israel’s Knesset…
Auteur: Phineas Rueckert
