Several thousand people gathered at the Place de la République in Paris early Thursday evening to support the Palestinians, despite the administrative judiciary having confirmed the ban on that demonstration, before they were dispersed under tear gas and water jets, an AFP journalist noted.
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Other gatherings, also banned, took place in the center of Rennes, where, according to an AFP journalist, around fifty demonstrators gathered, but also in Lille, where there were ten arrests for “rebellion” and “refusal to stand” in the prefecture.
According to an AFP photographer, despite the ban and cancellation of the pro-Palestinian demonstration by organizers, around a hundred people gathered in Toulouse before mobile gendarmes used tear gas to disperse them.
In Paris, according to police headquarters, there were 24 fines and 10 arrests among the 3,000 people present.
After Saturday’s attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Israel, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin ordered in a telegram the systematic ban on “pro-Palestinian demonstrations, as they could likely lead to disturbances of public order.” sent to the prefect on Thursday.
The ministry told AFP that “the organizers” of these demonstrations and “the troublemakers” were being arrested.
In Paris, demonstrators gathered at Place de la République chanting “Palestine will win” or even “Israel assassin, Macron complicit” and carrying Palestinian flags.
The Republic Monument in the center of the square had “Free Palestine” spray-painted in capital letters.
Police Prefect Laurent Nuñez banned that gathering on Tuesday, predicting that it would “be the scene of attitudes, words and gestures, mainly of an anti-Jewish nature, that incite racial hatred and advocate terrorist attacks carried out in the Middle East in recent days.”
Following an urgent request from several associations, the Paris Administrative Court decided on Thursday afternoon to maintain this ban.
A few days after the Hamas offensive against Israel, the judge cited a context of “extreme violence” and “proven risks of exporting this violence (…) on national soil,” particularly given the “resumption of anti-Semitic acts” since that attack .
The presidents of the AFPS (France-Palestine Solidarity Association), Bertrand Heilbronn, and the FTCR (Federation of Tunisians for Citizenship of Both Banks), Mohammed Ben Saïd, told AFP that they did not maintain the call for the demonstration on Thursday evening.
For her part, the leader of CAPJPO-Europalestine, Olivia Zemor, told AFP her intention to “let people demonstrate” “if they want to.”
On Wednesday evening, pro-Palestinian rallies took place in Nantes, Nîmes, Bordeaux and Toulouse, despite prefectures issuing bans due to a lack of prior declaration and for public safety reasons.
Despite the organizers’ ban and cancellation of the pro-Palestinian demonstration in Toulouse, a maximum of a hundred people gathered before mobile police dispersed them with tear gas.
On Thursday, the prefect of Hérault banned two more demonstrations planned for Friday in Béziers and Saturday in Montpellier.
In Bordeaux, however, around a hundred people followed the Girondin Collective’s call for a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis, AFP journalists noted. Unlike the gathering organized the previous day in the same city, this gathering was not banned by the prefecture.