Israel pressures French suburb to remove Nakba street sign
Middle East Monitor, June 13, 2018
Under
Israeli pressure, a French suburb today removed a street sign commemorating the
Nakba.
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| The street sign, which was written in French and Arabic, read: “In memory of the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians and the destruction of 532 villages in 1948 by the war criminal David Ben-Gurion for the creation of Israel” [Twitter] |
The
street sign, which was written in French and Arabic, read: “In memory of the
expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians and the destruction of 532 villages in 1948
by the war criminal David Ben-Gurion for the creation of Israel.”
Israel
had pressured the suburb to remove the plaque, with Israel’s foreign ministry
spokesperson, Emmanuel Nahshon, describing the renaming of the street as “a
nauseating act”. Israel’s Ambassador to France, Aliza Bin-Noun, accused the
mayor of supporting “Palestinian terrorism” and inciting hatred.
The sign
also sparked criticism from a number of pro-Israel groups across France, with
the president of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France
(CRIF), an umbrella group of French Jewish communities, calling the street sign
“shockingly irresponsible and dangerous”.
In 2014,
the same suburb was ordered to remove a commemorative plaque for Majdi
Al-Rimawi, an imprisoned member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP).
Last
week, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met
with France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, at the Elysee Palace to discuss
regional politics and the Iran nuclear deal. While in Paris, Netanyahu told
leaders of the city’s Jewish community that “Israel has stopped a great deal of
attacks in Europe and will continue to do so,” according to Haaretz.
In
December 2017, Macron told Netanyahu he ought to “make gestures towards the
Palestinians,” which could include freezing illegal Israeli settlement construction
in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli PM responded by saying that “the sooner
the Palestinians came to grips with the reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s
capital, the sooner there will be peace,” Haaretz
reported.
France’s
Macron has condemned the US decision to recognise
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move
the US Embassy to the city, calling it a “threat to peace”. French
representatives did not attend the embassy’s opening ceremony in May.
