Paris police launch tear gas and beat pro-Palestinian protesters with batons in clash
Pro-Palestine protesters clashed with police in Paris last night ahead of a football match between France and Israel later today.
A large group engaged in an altercation with police in the French capital in which batons were drawn and tear gas used.
It comes as an “Israel is forever” event was being held in the city centre, with Israel’s controversial finance minister Bezalel Smotrich due to attend.
Smotrich has come under fire after claiming Donald Trump’s victory in the US election meant “the time has come” to annex the West Bank and that further extension of Israeli sovereignty over the region was the only way to remove the “threat” of a Palestinian state.
French authorities refused a request made by a pro-Palestinian organization, CAPJPO-EuroPalestine, to cancel the event, which was described as “the mobilisation of Zionist French-speaking forces in the service of Israel’s power and history.”
Paris Police Prefect Laurent Nuñez said: “I will not ban this demonstration. I have no reason to do so. We’re obviously going to protect this gala.”
A counter protest made its way through the city and attempted to make its way towards the pro-Israeli demonstration when clashes were seen to have taken place.
Social media footage showed some protesters being apprehended although numbers of arrests have not yet been confirmed.
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Tonight’s Nations League match at the Stade de France comes at a tense moment, with diplomatic relations between French President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu strained by Israel’s war in Gaza.
Police chiefs confirmed around 4,000 officers will secure the event, deployed in the stadium, outside the ground and on public transport. It comes after Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and locals clashed in Amsterdam last week, with five Israeli football fans injured.
Co-founder of the Movement for French Jews, a right-wing Zionist youth group, Aurélien Bernheïm said around 30 of his organisation’s members would attend the match, adding: “But I wont hide it, many of these young people were scared to go as they had in their heads these appalling images from Amsterdam.”
President of the Associations of Palestinians in Ile de France Walid Attalah called for the match to be cancelled, saying: “Russia has been banned because there was the occupation of Ukraine, it was illegal, there were war crimes, but Israel is never sanctioned for what it does.”
It comes after Human Rights Watch said Israeli authorities have caused a forced displacement of Palestinian people in Gaza to an extent that constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israeli authorities have previously rejected such accusations, and say their forces operate in compliance with international law.
Israel invaded the Gaza Strip last year after Hamas-led gunmen attacked communities in southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and abducting more than 250 as hostages.
Since then, the Israeli campaign has killed more than 43,500 people, according to Gaza health authorities, and destroyed much of the enclave’s infrastructure, forcing most of the 2.3 million population to move several times.
Human Rights Watch said the displacement of Palestinians “is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors”, an action it said would amount to “ethnic cleansing.”