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Publié le 13 Avril 2014

Is a French Intifada Brewing?

By Marc Hecker, published on April 9, 2014 in the American Interest

France has Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities. The outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence since the Second Intifada are only the most visible signs of an unstable and fraught situation.

In March 2012, 23-year-old Mohamed Merah—born in France to Algerian immigrants—attacked a Jewish school in Toulouse, southwestern France, killing a young father and three children. Merah, who had already murdered three soldiers some days before, had traveled to Afghanistan and trained as a jihadist in Pakistan. He blamed France for waging war on Muslims: at that time, the French armed forces were still deployed in Afghanistan and had just waged a war in another Muslim country, Libya. Much like other jihadists, Merah hated France for its colonial past and for its secularism (laïcité), which had led to a ban on full-face veils in public.

Merah’s attack deeply shocked the French Jewish community, the largest in Europe. While it is getting smaller due to assimilation or emigration to Israel and other countries, there remain today approximately 500 000 Jews in France. The French Jewish community, is, however, ten times smaller than the Muslim community, estimated to be 5 to 6 million—the largest in Europe. Though French Jews know that only a small fraction of this Muslim community is likely to radicalize and fall into jihadist hands, it’s still troubling that hundreds of French Muslims recently left France and joined jihadist groups in Syria. Though most of these French jihadists say that they only want to die as “martyrs” fighting against Assad’s troops, some say that they want to come back to France and imitate Merah.

The fear of the French Jewish community is not only linked to jihadism. It also relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the end of September 2000, the second Intifada began. Simultaneously, a wave of anti-Semitic acts of violence hit France, unprecedented since the Second World War. During the first ten days of October 2000, the synagogues of various cities in the suburbs of Paris (Villepinte, Clichy-sous-Bois, Creil and Les Ulis) were partly burnt down. The National Consultative Commission for Human Rights (Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l’Homme, CNCDH) recorded the vandalizing of 43 synagogues and 3 Jewish cemeteries in the course of the fourth quarter of the year 2000.

The Commission indicated that such acts were perpetrated by people “with [North African] immigrant backgrounds”(1) and added that “none of the individuals arrested had records as radical Islamists. Except for some rare appeals to fight Israel using any possible means or to join the Intifada, most Muslim organizations and officials condemned the actions against the Jewish community, even though they strongly denounced the actions of Israeli security forces”(2). There were more cases of physical violence, usually resulting in minor injuries. In 2000, the idea that France was “importing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” started to spread. Ever since, every outbreak of violence in the Middle East has raised the level of tension on French national territory.

In order to better understand the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s repercussions in France, one must first go back approximately forty years, when that conflict was initially exported to France.

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

The Six-Day War of 1967 represents a turning point in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its international repercussions. During this short-lived conflict, Israeli forces crushed the armies of the coalition set up by several Arab countries. This war led to the Israeli occupation of the Eastern part of Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. On this occasion, Palestinian armed groups revised their strategy: they understood that relying on Arab countries to “free Palestine” was not a good bet and that harassment carried out on Israeli territory would not be enough to bring the Israeli society to its knees. Consequently, they opted for a strategy of internationalization of the conflict, by relying on asymmetrical tactics (hijacking planes, taking hostages, bombings) outside of the Middle East—notably in Europe. Some of these events turned out to be quite spectacular. The goal was to raise awareness for the Palestinian cause and to get the issue of Palestine on the international agenda—leading some experts to refer to these acts of violence as “promotional terrorism(3)”.

This internationalization campaign began on July 23, 1968 with the hijacking of a Rome-Tel-Aviv flight by a commando that belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)(4). Dozens of further attacks followed, the most well-known being the hostage-taking at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, which ended with the death of eleven Israeli athletes. Then on September 19, 1972, the Black September organization sent booby-trapped envelopes all across Europe to Israeli diplomats. Two envelopes were sent to Israeli diplomats posted in Paris, but they didn’t claim a victim. An Israeli diplomat was killed in London(5).

Further more dramatic attacks hit France in the following years. On January 13, 1975, a commando led by the well-known terrorist Carlos—who at the time still belonged to Wadie Haddad’s PFLP – Special Operations(6)—fired a rocket at an El Al airline Boeing 707 approaching Orly Airport near Paris. The rocket missed its target and hit an airplane of the Yugoslavian airline JAT. An airport employee, a steward and a gendarme were injured(7). On 19 January, there was another failed terrorist attack at Orly airport. A member of the “Mohamed Boudia Commando” managed to get onto the terrace of the South Terminal, and used a RPG to fire at an Israeli Boeing 747. When surprised by a policeman, the terrorist drew back inside the building with his two accomplices. They then managed to take some hostages, and a standoff ensued until the terrorists were allowed to embark on an Air France airplane bound for Bagdad—in exchange for the release of the hostages(8).

On May 23, 1978, Orly airport was once again the target of a Palestinian group. The attack, inspired by one at Lod in May 1972, failed as a result of the intervention of the air and border police. Three men, pretending to be boarding an El Al flight bound for Tel-Aviv, opened fire at the entrance of the boarding area. The police retaliated and the attackers were killed before they could use the grenades and plastic charges they were carrying. A policeman was also killed during the shootout(9).

On October 3, 1980, the nature of the terrorist attacks changed: for the very first time, the French Jewish community was directly targeted, rather than Israeli interests. Members of the Fatah Revolutionary Council attacked a synagogue on rue Copernic in Paris using a booby-trapped motorcycle(10). Four people were killed and approximately twenty were injured. In 1982, two additional attacks confirmed that the targets were no longer solely Israeli. On August 9, a commando group entered the Goldenberg restaurant on rue des Rosiers in Paris, fired a grenade and shot at the restaurant’s clients with a machine-gun. Six were killed and 22 injured(11). On 17September, a car belonging to the Israeli embassy exploded outside the Lycée Carnot, a high school in the 17th district of Paris. Almost a hundred high school students were injured during the attack. The Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Israeli secret services were also involved in the export of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to France. Following the hostage-taking in Munich, the Israeli authorities decided to eliminate several Palestinian representatives. The first person to be targeted was the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Rome, on October 16, 1972. The second was his counterpart in Paris, Mahmoud Hamchari. Between 1973 and 1982, Basil Al Kubaïsi, Mohamed Boudia(12), Mahmoud Ould Saleh(13), Ezzedine Kalak, Zouheir Mohsen and Fadl al-Dani were killed on French territory. Half of these targeted killings appear to be attributable to Israeli secret services. It is likely, however, that three of them—the assassination of Ezzedine Kalak(14), Zouheir Mohsen and Fadl al-Dani cannot be attributed to the Mossad but were rather more the result of inter-Palestinian or inter-Arab rivalries(15).

At the end of the 1980s, in particular with the outset of the first Intifada in December 1987, the Palestinian strategy was refocused on the Middle East. Attacks and assassinations in Europe and further afield largely came to an end, with a few notable exceptions, such as the killing of Atef Bseiso, the head of PLO security and intelligence, in June 1992 in front of the Meridien-Montparnasse hotel in Paris(16). Consequently, throughout the 1990s, the Middle Eastern conflict no longer seemed to represent such an important threat to French national interests. The problem, however, was to reappear in the year 2000 in a very different form.

THE SECOND INTIFADA HITS FRANCE

The rise of anti-Semitism in France during the first half of the 2000s was described in the French press as a consequence of the Second Intifada. The expressions “French Intifada” or “importing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” spread rapidly. These expressions can be understood in two different ways. Their first meaning would refer to the violent repercussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in France. In this version, it would indeed seem that what used to be the exporting of the conflict in the 1970s turned into the importing of the conflict in the early 2000s. While in the 1970s, acts of violence were committed by members of armed groups that came from the Middle East, those observed during the first decade of the twenty-first century were carried out by French individuals or people who had been living in France for a long time.

In the press articles published during the autumn of the year 2000, the individuals designated as the “importers” were usually youngsters of Maghreb origin, living in poor neighborhoods and who, finding it difficult to integrate, identified with the Palestinians(17). However, the argument that suggests that “suburban youth” identified with Palestinians merits further investigation. Some signs suggest that this process of identification is by no means automatic. For instance, when a radical group organized a celebration of Quds Day in Argenteuil (an impoverished city in the northwestern suburbs of Paris), most youngsters who passed by paid absolutely no attention to the gathering(18).

Among the violent individuals who are believed to be importing the conflict into France are some small pro-Israeli activist groups such as the Jewish Defense League (Ligue de Défense Juive). The organization’s ideological reference is the Rabbi Meir Kahane, a former member of the Israeli far-right and member of the Knesset who was assassinated in 1990. Its main aim was defined as being the protection of French Jews, in the light of the fact that, in the early 2000s, the organized Jewish community considered that the police and Ministry of the Interior did not properly appreciate the extent to which the number of anti-Semitic acts of violence had increased.

No matter who the “importers” of violence are, the first sense of what is termed the “importing of the conflict” should still be considered with caution: one should not imagine that the situation in France is likely to escalate to the point that it would ever become as intense as in the Middle East. In Israel and the Palestinian territories, the degree of violence that was witnessed during the second Intifada was comparable to that of a state of war. In France, on the other hand, violence took the form of delinquency. The “Culture of Peace”(19) that has prevailed in Western Europe for several decades means it is very unlikely that the violence will escalate in France in the way it has in the Middle East. For the time being, the small, violent groups that have been “importing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” have, at worst, been using metal bars or knives, not plastic charges and Kalashnikovs. While a terrorist attack cannot be ruled out, the prospect of a civil war between Jews and Muslims—a prospect that some people within the organized Jewish community fear—has more to do with fantasy than with reality.

The other meaning given to “importing” in reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should also be analyzed. It simply refers to the many repercussions of the Middle Eastern conflict in France, including non-violent ones. The findings are striking: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has penetrated French society as no other.

WHO “IMPORTS” THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT?

The fact that France has the largest Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe is not unrelated to France’s sensitivity to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it does not provide a full explanation. In order to thoroughly understand the process that is taking place in France, it is necessary to precisely identify the (non-violent) “importers” of the conflict. Some of them have their origins in both Jewish and Muslim communities. On the Jewish side, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France, CRIF), is a very good example. Since the beginning of the second Intifada, the presidents of this institution have made an increasing number of statements in support of Israel and do not hide their desire that France adopt a more favorable foreign policy towards Israel(20). During the CRIF’s annual dinner in 2012, in the presence of the French President and several ministers, Richard Prasquier, President of the organization from 2007 to 2013, stated that “Israel is the focus of [the CRIF’s] attention and concerns” just before announcing that the organization is “taken aback by France’s support to the entry of Palestine into UNESCO.” On the Muslim side, it is increasingly frequent to see prayers on the streets during pro-Palestinian demonstrations and to observe community associations taking part in them. In January 2009, when tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets of Paris to protest against the war in Gaza, one could see in the midst of the crowd a banner of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (Union des organisations islamiques de France, UOIF), a group said to be close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Nonetheless, in pro-Palestinian processions, most of the demonstrators are not Muslims and the symbols (flags, banners, etc.) displayed are usually political rather that religious.

Among the “importers” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict we find such organizations as the French New Anti-Capitalist Party or the Communist Party. The latter is in fact a historical cornerstone of the pro-Palestinian movement that was put together in the 1960s and 1970s around four groups: far-left activists who considered (and still consider) Israel to be a henchman of imperialism; secular Arab activists who found in this conflict a new cause after Algeria’s independence; some members of the Gaullist party who, as Charles de Gaulle himself, blamed Israel for the Six-Day War; and Catholic activists brought together by the weekly newspaper Témoignage chrétien (Christian Testimony). The reason why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict attracts activists who have nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinians is that it is perceived as a universal phenomenon that should affect everyone. On the pro-Palestinian side, the “colonialist interpretative framework” of the conflict prevails: Israelis are perceived as colonialists and Palestinians as a colonized people. This view existed before the 1967 war(21), but has intensified with the multiplication of settlements(22) in the occupied territories. Therefore, it is not unusual to find in pro-Palestinian circles people aged over 60 who had campaigned for Algerian independence or against the war in Vietnam. On the pro-Israeli side, the “democratic interpretative framework” is dominant: Israel is seen as the only democracy in the Middle East, opposed to secular dictatorships and Islamic movements. The “Arab Spring” did not change this view, given that the Muslim Brotherhood is perceived as the main victor in the uprisings that took place in 2011. It should be noted there are also some non-Jewish organizations such as “France-Israel” which are part of the pro-Israeli sphere. When one questions their leaders on what motivates their support for Israel, the “democracy argument” is most often brought forward. This understanding of the conflict tends to irritate pro-Palestinian activists, who retort that Israel is a sham democracy that has established a sort of “apartheid” against the Palestinians.

Pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian activists are not the sole “importers” of the conflict in France. Some local elected representatives have sought to alert the French population to the issues of the Middle East. Whether out of conviction or to satisfy their constituents, they do not shy away from tackling the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during Town Council meetings, or at Regional Council level.

The various laws on decentralization that have been passed in France since the early 1980s have nurtured this trend, since local and regional authorities have gained extended responsibilities in the field of foreign relations(23). Dozens of French cities have been twinned or engage in “decentralized cooperation” with Israeli and Palestinian cities (Dunkerque/Gaza, Bordeaux/Ramallah, Marseille/Haifa, Antony/Sderot, Nancy/Kiryat Shmona, etc.). There even exists a Friends of Israel Association of Elected Local and Municipal Representatives (Association des élus locaux et municipaux amis d’Israël, Adelmad), as well as a Network of Decentralized Cooperation for Palestine (Réseau de coopération décentralisée pour la Palestine, RCDP), or even an Association for the Promotion of Twinning between Palestinian Refugee Camps and French cities (Association pour la promotion des jumelages entre les camps de réfugiés palestiniens et les villes de France, AJPF). All Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and West Bank have official relations with French municipalities; even some refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria are concerned. For instance, a partnership exists between Bagnolet (in the eastern suburbs of Paris) and Chatila. Projects for decentralized cooperation often have a humanitarian, cultural or sports dimension to them. During the second Intifada, the General Council of Seine-Saint-Denis—a working class area North of Paris—put into place an exchange program between the association “the Red Devils” (Les diables rouges) in Bagnolet and the municipal sports club of Jenine to train Greco-Roman wrestling coaches(24). Many of the partnerships also have a political dimension to them. Over the past few years, several French municipalities have decided to make protagonists of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict such as Marwan Barghouti, Salah Hamouri or Gilad Shalit their honorary citizens. In some cases, giant portraits of these people have been displayed on the walls of town halls. In general, left-wing mayors supported Marwan Barghouti and Salah Hamouri, while right-wing municipalities celebrated Gilad Shalit. However, this divide is not systematic since some left-wing communes—notably Paris—have pledged to campaign for the liberation of the Franco-Israeli soldier Guilad Shalit and some right-wing elected representatives—such as former mayor of Versailles Etienne Pinte—have expressed their support for Salah Hamouri.

Identifying the “importers” only allows for a limited understanding of how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict spreads within French society. It is also necessary to study the driving forces that explain why this conflict resonates so strongly in France… Read more.

1. Annual report of the French National Consultative Commission for Human Rights (Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l’Homme), 2000, p. 17 and pp. 36-38.

2. Ibid.

3. Gérard Chaliand, Les guerres irrégulières, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, pp. 806-808.

4. Bruce Hoffman, La mécanique terroriste, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1999, p. 81. Isabelle Sommier, Le terrorisme, Paris, Flammarion, 2000, p. 15.

5. Michael Burleigh, Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, London, Harper Press, 2008, p. 168.

6. Michaël Prazan, Une histoire du terrorisme, Paris, Flammarion, 2012, pp. 227-245.

7. “Parqué à côté d’un appareil israélien, un avion yougoslave est atteint par une roquette à Orly-Sud”, Le Monde, 14 January 1975, p. 34. See also: Harvey W. Kushner, Encyclopedia of Terrorism, London, Sage, 2003, p. 322.

8. B.D., “Les trois terroristes ont gardé leurs otages pendant plus de dix-sept heures”, Le Monde, 21 January 1975, p. 11.

9. Philippe Boggio,” Une opération suicide?”, Le Monde, 23 May 1978, p. 10.

10. Doris Bensimon, Les juifs de France et leurs relations avec Israël: 1945-1988, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1989, pp. 252-254.

11. Philippe Boucher, “Le poids des morts,” Le Monde, 11 August 1982, pp. 1 and 4. See also Charles Tilly, “Les origines du répertoire de l’action collective contemporaine en France et en Grande-Bretagne,” Vingtième siècle, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1984, pp. 92-93.

12. Mohamed Boudia, an Algerian playwright who was deeply engaged with the Palestinian cause, was killed on 28 June 1973 when his car exploded. See “Le commando Mohamed-Boudia”, Le Monde, 21 January 1975, p. 11.

13. “Paris: un ancien représentant de l’OLP est assassiné,” Le Monde, 5 January 1977, pp. 1 et 3.

14. “Les meurtriers du représentant de l’OLP à Paris déclarent appartenir au ‘Front du refus’,” Le Monde, 5 August 1978, p. 3.

15. Patrick Seale, Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire, New York, Random House, 1992, pp. 47-50.

16. About the investigation regarding this assassination, see Ronen Bergman, « Affaire Bsseiso. Quand le juge Bruguière s’attaque au Mossad », Courrier International, No. 505, 6 July 2000.

17. See for instance Jacques Amalric, “Halte-là!” Libération, 12 October 2000. See also the interview of Khadija Mohsen-Finan by Xavier Ternisien published in Le Monde on 14 October 2000.

18. Quds day is an annual event that was established in 1979 in Iran by Ayatollah Khomeinei to protest against the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and to express solidarity with the Palestinian people’s fight against the “Zionist entity.” The celebration in Argenteuil that took place on 6 October 2007 was organized by the Party of Muslims in France (Parti des musulmans de France, PMF).

19. André Thiéblemont, “Culture de paix et emploi de la force armée,” Le Débat, No. 142, November-December 2006.

20. Samuel Ghiles-Meilhac, Le Crif. De la Résistance juive à la tentation du lobby, Paris, Robert Laffont, 2011.

21. Maxime Rodinson, “Israël, fait colonial?,” Les Temps Modernes, No. 253 bis, 1967, pp. 17-88. This article was published in June 1967 but was written before the war.

22. The term used in French for settlement is “colonie” (colony).

23. Marie-José Tulard, La coopération décentralisée, Paris, Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence (LGDJ), 2006.

24. All of these projects and many more appear in the document entitled Recensement des coopérations décentralisées franco-palestiniennes, produced in 2005  by the Mediterranean division of Cités Unies France.

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