The tour of France by Mariam Abudaqa, a recognized women's rights activist in Gaza and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under the alias of Abu Daqqa, will not be completed. After speaking in Paris, Lyon, Saint-Etienne, Metz, Martigues and Marseille, sometimes on the sidelines of meetings banned by local prefectures, 72-year-old Abudaqa was served with an "absolute emergency" expulsion order in Marseille on Monday, October 16, issued two days previously by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
Her 50-day visa, issued by the French consulate in Jerusalem on August 7 and valid until November 24, was withdrawn. In view of the time needed to organize Abudaqa's departure, a house arrest order was also issued, from 10 pm to 6 am in a hotel in downtown Marseille.
The interior minister explained Abudaqa's membership in the PFLP – "an organization on the European Union's list subject to restrictive measures in the fight against terrorism," stated the expulsion order – was the cause for the decision. For the French state, Abudaqa's "widely publicized participation" in events and demonstrations "is likely to stir up tensions, hatred and violence between communities and create serious disturbances to public order" in the current context.
In no particular order, the expulsion order mentions "the Hamas attack on Israel," "the large number of victims and hostages at risk of execution," "the violent confrontations still underway [in the Middle East]," as well as Abuqada's stance in favor of the release of Lebanese terrorist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, sentenced in 1987 by the French justice system to life imprisonment. To explain his decision, the interior minister also cited "the terrorist attack at the Lycée Gambetta-Carnot in Arras" and "the pervasiveness of the terrorist threat in France."
Having spent several days in the Marseille region, where she spoke three times to large audiences on October 14 and 15, in Marseille and Martigues, Abudaqa was arrested shortly after 6 pm on Monday, on her way to the train station in the company of Pierre Stambul, spokesman for the French Jewish Union for Peace. She was heading to Toulouse to continue her lecture tour in the evening. She was also scheduled to speak in Montauban, Pau and La Roche-sur-Yon, before departing on November 11.
Since her arrival in France, Abudaqa has had a number of her speeches blocked by the authorities, including the one scheduled for the Assemblée Nationale on November 9 at the invitation of the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI) group. It was canceled at the request of Assemblée Nationale President Yaël Braun-Pivet (of Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party). In Marseille, far-right Rassemblement National (RN) MP Franck Allisio wrote to the regional prefect on October 11 to request the banning of a conference in Martigues. According to the MP, Abudaqa's speech was "an indignity (...) at a time when Israel is suffering the most terrible massacre since the Second World War."
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