French pro-Palestinian group contests government decision to shut it down

By Layli Foroudi

PARIS (Reuters) - A French pro-Palestinian protest group is contesting a government decision to shut it down, saying the move was politically motivated and based on "false" arguments as part of a wider crackdown on the movement for Palestinian rights.

Urgence Palestine (Emergency Palestine), created in 2023 to protest against Israel's military offensive in Gaza, filed its counterarguments to the shutdown procedure on Thursday, their lawyer Elsa Marcel said.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, explaining the decision, said in a letter dated April 28 to one of the group's founders, Omar Alsoumi, that Urgence Palestine had provoked violent acts, including towards Jewish people, and had called for armed struggle.

Asked about the decision, Alsoumi told Reuters on Friday:

"This shows the partiality of the French government on the genocidal war that the Palestinian people is experiencing."

He said the group, which has been organising protests across France over the past 19 months, rejects any conflation of Jews and the Israeli government and that Palestinians have the right to resist occupation under international law.

The French Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Last week Retailleau said the move against Urgence Palestine was necessary to "crack down on Islamists".

"We must not deform the Palestinians' just cause," he said in an interview with CNews/Europe 1 on April 30.

The group's lawyer Marcel said the closure was part of a wider wave of repression in Western countries against pro-Palestinian, anti-war activists.

"There is an extremely elastic use of the question of terrorism apology, which we contest, and criticism of Israel is represented as antisemitism, which we also contest," she said.

Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to Hamas-run health authorities. The offensive was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Surges in violence in the Israel-Palestinian conflict have often fuelled racist incidents in France. The number of antisemitic and Islamophobic acts rose by 284% and 29%respectively in 2023, France's human rights commission said.

(Reporting by Layli Foroudi; Editing by Gareth Jones)