Pragmatism in motion: Yasser Arafat welcomes Jacques Chirac to Gaza, 23 October 1996
Jacques Langevin · Sygma · Getty
On 23 October 1996, the day after his well-known altercation with Israeli police in Jerusalem, Jacques Chirac met Yasser Arafat in Gaza, the place the 2 presidents inaugurated Charles de Gaulle Road in entrance of an enthusiastic crowd. A decade later, in April 2007, on a go to to Paris, the brand new president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, introduced plans to create a Jacques Chirac Road in Ramallah. There will likely be no Emmanuel Macron Road in Nablus. The French president is hated within the Arab world: when the individuals of Tunis and Beirut took to the streets to protest in opposition to Israel’s response to the 7 October assaults by Hamas and its allies, they assembled exterior the French embassy chanting ‘Macron the assassin’.
‘There are not any buts … Israel has the suitable to defend itself,’ Macron insisted on 12 October, in good lockstep with Washington. Two days earlier, President Joe Biden had set the tone: ‘Israel has the suitable to reply, certainly has an obligation to reply to these vicious assaults … There’s no justification for terrorism. There’s no excuse.’ Simply as throughout operations Forged Lead (2008-09), Pillar of Defence (2012), Protecting Edge (2014), Guardian of the Partitions (2021) and Breaking Daybreak (2022), the Israeli authorities has carte blanche to hold out Operation Swords of Iron. It could possibly act because it needs, inflicting energy and water cuts, inhabitants displacements and indiscriminate bombings, unrestrained and freed from criticism from its allies, aside from symbolic and consequence-free pronouncements, which Macron is all the time comfortable to supply.
Israel is organising within the territories it has captured an occupation that may inevitably contain oppression, repression and expulsions, and a resistance to this occupation is forming, which Israel in flip lessons as terrorism
Charles de Gaulle
It’s laborious to consider now, however France was as soon as thought a good friend of the Palestinian individuals. For many years, its leaders have been ready to denounce colonisation, (…)
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