In the run-up to the European elections last June, the Palestinian question and the condemnation of Israel's war in the Gaza Strip became a central issue in French politics. Even more so than Russia's invasion of Ukraine, support for the Palestinians is now a deeply divisive domestic political matter, which is rarely the case for international issues that are seldom debated in France's Parliament or during election campaigns.
The turning point for La France Insoumise (LFI) was symbolized by the recruitment of French-Palestinian activist Rima Hassan as a candidate for the European elections. The new member of the European Parliament, put forward by LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has since set the tone for LFI's positions on the post-October 7 events through her virulent messages on social media. Already used previously by several LFI members, the word "genocide" has become the party's systematic term to designate the large-scale massacres of civilians in Gaza by Israeli bombing.
This reflects the determination of LFI and Mélenchon to make the Palestinian question a marker of the left, reviving the tradition of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF), long a friend to Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the groups founded by Yasser Arafat. Mélenchon is also not devoid of a desire to put pressure on the other left-wing parties, the Socialists and the PCF, which the massacres perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, have deeply shaken and even divided. Finally, his constant references to "young people" and "neighborhoods," often associated with the Palestinian cause, fit into a pattern of trying to recruit voters in France's Arab-Muslim community, estimated to be between 4 and 8 million strong. His gamble has had mixed results: the Socialists outperformed LFI in the European elections.
'Witch hunt'
Thomas Portes, LFI's point man on the Palestinian question, has a long experience of activism on the issue: He himself took part in several campaigns in the 2000s and 2010s, when he was a Communist activist, later with the Greens, before finally joining LFI. There are three points on which members of LFI agree, he said: the fact that a genocide is underway, the need to recognize the Palestinian state and the need to impose sanctions on Israel – an arms embargo and the suspension of association agreements with the European Union.
He defends the use of the word "genocide" by quoting the positions taken by various UN bodies and the International Court of Justice: "No one is minimizing what the Jews went through in the Second World War, but we can't refrain from using this term when there is a desire to totally or partially eliminate a people. You have to use it even if it creates a debate or a disturbance." Young people, Portes said, are particularly sensitive to the "colonial prism" and "double standards" at work in the Palestinian territories and on the world's diplomatic stage. "Young people today want peace, injustice revolts them," he said.
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