France: MPs sign draft resolution condemning Israel's apartheid

The draft resolution was originally submitted on 13 July by Communist MP Jean-Paul Lecocq but stirred a public debate on Friday.

Signatories include former presidential candidate Fabien Roussel and deputies from the France Proud radical left party, such as Adrien Katniss, Socialist Christine Pierce-Bonn and Aurelian Tashi and Sabrina Sabaihi of the Green Party.

According to the motion: "Since it was created in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy aimed at establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and expanding its control over the territory for the benefit of Israeli Jews."

Following the 1967 occupation, the motion adds: "Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

The motion calls for the legalisation of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and urges the "imposition of a strict arms embargo" and a French-sponsored resolution to the United Nations Security Council that would impose: "Targeted sanctions, such as the freezing of assets, on Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid."

It also calls on the French government to "recognise the State of Palestine."

Jérôme Guedj, a NUPES MP, attacked the motion for describing the Israeli regime as a colonial entity devoid of legal and moral legitimacy.

"The resolution maintains that Israel is an apartheid regime, calls for the legalisation of the boycott of Israeli products, and pleads for the official recognition of Palestine," Guedj tweeted. "If I can defend this last point, the first two are unacceptable. I condemn them."

The Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) strongly condemned the "violent and fake" attempt to delegitimise the State of Israel.

It said that this motion is a reflection of anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism, considering it a trigger of hate in France and a challenge to the "safety of French Jews".

The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra) tweeted: "In a scandalous and misleading motion, a group of deputies dares to qualify a people as a 'racial group'. We will not allow this obsessive anti-Semitism of a certain 'left' to express itself as it dishonours the Republic and seeks to inflame public opinion."