"Between Dunkirk and Gaza, it's a long story": Matteo Pottier Bianchi doesn't know where to start. At the age of 22, this history teacher who studied the French Second Empire at the Sorbonne was elected president of the Dunkirk-Gaza French-Palestinian association in December 2022. His mission: to preserve cooperation between the northern French city and the Palestinian enclave, which have been linked by a twinning arrangement since 1996. "There are similarities between Dunkirk and Gaza," he explained. "Geographically, both territories extend over a strip of land along the coast. They have also both experienced occupation, war." Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, the situation has of course changed completely. "No communication is possible," lamented Pottier Bianchi. "We can't do anything, no one can get to Gaza. A student exchange between Dunkirk and Palestine was set to be launched, but the war has frozen it."

The link between Dunkirk and Gaza was officially forged by Michel Delebarre (1946-2022), the Socialist mayor of the northern city for 25 years, from 1989 to 2014. The former minister under President François Mitterrand was particularly sensitive to the Israeli-Palestinian question. "For him, the 1993 Oslo Accords, which were supposed to mark the end of the conflict, were a great moment of hope, quickly dashed following the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin," noted Claude Nicolet, Delebarre's deputy from 1995 to 2014. "He wanted to find a way to work for peace."

Inspired by the twinning arrangements established between German and French towns at the end of the Second World War to bring the two populations closer together, Delebarre wanted to do the same with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Initially, the idea of a three-way marriage between Dunkirk, Gaza and the Israeli municipality of Ramat Hasharon, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, was considered. In 1997, a tree of peace was even planted in Dunkirk in the company of Delebarre, Ashraf Shaat, a Gazan student at the University of Dunkirk, and the mayor of Ramat Hasharon, Ephraim Hiram. "Despite advanced relations with Ramat Hasharon, the tripartite arrangement was abandoned due to a peak in tensions during the second Intifada, between 2000 and 2005," explained Pottier Bianchi. "Relations then became too tense between the two sides."

This failure did not, however, weaken the ties between the Dunkirk Urban Community (CUD), which comprises the city and 20 nearby municipalities, and Gaza. In 1996, the Gaza-Dunkirk association was created to support the community in its cooperation with the Palestinian enclave. Within two years, a library and an urban park (financed by the CUD) were inaugurated in Gaza. Cooperation continued with the hosting of several Palestinian students and the training of Gazan technicians in water management in Dunkirk. But two events put an end to this collaboration. The first was the victory of Hamas in the legislative elections in the Gaza Strip in 2006.

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