3,000 people at the pro-Palestinian demonstration in Paris, although banned

“We are all Palestinians.” Despite the ban on the demonstration, 3 000 people gathered, in the early evening of Thursday October 12, Place de la République in Paris. Still according to the police headquarters, 24 verbalizations and 10 arrests were made among the participants. One of them, interviewed by franceinfo, explains having come to “the right to existence, to water, to electricity and to a normal life” in the Gaza Strip. The procession ended up being evacuated by the police.

Other equally banned gatherings took place elsewhere in France. In Toulouse, despite the ban and cancellation by the organizers of the pro-Palestinian demonstration, around a hundred people gathered, before being dispersed by mobile gendarmes using tear gas, according to a photographer from the AFP. Around fifty demonstrators also gathered in the center of Rennes. In Lille, there were ten arrests for “rebellion” and “refusal to disperse”, specifies the prefecture.

The Minister of the Interior ordered the systematic ban on “pro-Palestinian demonstrations, because they are likely to generate disturbances to public order”, after the attack perpetrated on Saturday by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Israel. Gérald Darmanin made this request in a telegram addressed to the prefects of police and departments.