The French parliament erupted in tumult on Tuesday, June 6, as a radical left lawmaker stood up with a Palestinian flag, a week after another MP was temporarily suspended for doing so.
Rachel Keke, an MP for the La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) party, brandished the flag at the start of a government questions session in the Assemblée Nationale. She stood up amid a flood of Green, Communist and LFI lawmakers who had dressed in green, white, red and black for the occasion and arranged to sit so that from afar they looked like the Palestinian flag.
"No, no, no, no, no," said Assemblée Nationale President Yaël Braun-Pivet. "I thought things were very clear and that you had, like everyone else, been able to read our rules," she said, calling for Keke to be sanctioned and temporarily suspending the session. Earlier, the speaker had reminded the left-wing lawmakers that parliamentarians were supposed to express themselves "exclusively in the oral form."
Fellow LFI parliament member Sebastien Delogu brandished the flag at the same session last week, causing him to be suspended for two weeks and have his parliamentary allowance cut by half for two months.
Keke, a former hotel chambermaid born in Ivory Coast, was elected to parliament in 2022. She made a name for herself after winning a grueling battle for better working conditions in the Paris hotel where she cleaned.
The latest Gaza war has sparked tensions in France, a country with the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe's biggest Muslim community. French President Emmanuel Macron has said he would be prepared to recognize a Palestinian state, but such a move should "come at a useful moment" and not be based on "emotion." Jean-Noël Barrot, junior minister for Europe, repeated this stance in parliament. "This decision must be useful," he said.