Tel Aviv Tribune Net correspondents
Paris – Despite the ongoing suppression of voices supporting Palestine and defending the rights of the residents of the Gaza Strip, students from various universities in the French capital, Paris, insisted on gathering in Sorbonne Square yesterday evening, Wednesday, before heading to Republic Square.
The Coordination of Universities Against Colonialism in Palestine called for a mobilization day at French universities, led by the Sorbonne University and the Faculty of Political Sciences “Sciences Po,” to commemorate the Nakba and demand an end to complicity with the genocide in Gaza and an end to the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine.
He called on the gathered students to demonstrate in solidarity with the Palestinian people, raising flags and banners demanding a ceasefire and the liberation of Palestine from the Israeli occupation, wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh and chanting the slogans “The students of Paris are with Gaza” and “The Nakba never ended.”
Solidarity leadership
The demonstrators also denounced the arrest of 86 students by the police, and denounced the announced targeting of everyone who supports the Palestinian cause and the academic boycott of Israel.
Former Palestinian prisoner and human rights lawyer Salah Hammouri praised the student movement taking place in many French universities.
Hammouri said that these students bear the responsibility of leading Palestinian solidarity and reminding that the genocide that is taking place today of the Palestinian people did not begin since the seventh of last October, but rather since 1948.
Hammouri added, in an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, that the arrest of the students comes in the context of the ongoing intimidation of everything Palestinian, and is part of the policy and strong alliance between Israel, the French government, and other European countries.
In the opinion of the Palestinian lawyer, the occupation’s goal of deporting the people of the Gaza Strip from their land is evidence of a future plan that will include the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Palestinian interior (the Palestinians of the 1948), considering that this confirms the importance of adhering to the resistance project.
Complete solidarity
Despite the heavy rain, members of the most prominent trade union in France, CGT, and employees of the French National Railway Company, SNCF, participated to express their full solidarity with the student movement, before heading to Place de la République, where hundreds of other demonstrators were waiting for them. .
As for the suburbs of the capital, Paris, the situation was not calmer. Students have “occupied” the building of the Graduate School of Social Sciences on the Condorcet campus in the Aubervilliers area since last Monday morning.
Students from the college reported to Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the institution’s administration did not respond to their demands to stop academic cooperation with Israeli universities, and to issue a public statement in which it took a position on the situation in Palestine and the suppression of the movement supporting the Palestinian people, but rather called the police to disperse the sit-in.
A student – who preferred not to reveal her name – said that 10 riot police trucks were deployed along Brodon Street outside the college, adding that they asked the vice president in the building to come down and talk to them to explain what was happening, but she did not do so and supported the police intervention.
Tightening the tone
A statement by the students said, “In continuation of the international student movement, we offer our support to the Palestinians, and that is why we occupied the college building. We have worked for 6 months to ensure that our demands are met, but we face silence from the administrative authorities.”
According to the same statement, “In line with the mobilization carried out by the Faculty of Political Sciences, the Sorbonne University, and the Maurice Genevois High School, the students decided to toughen their tone in the face of the lack of dialogue.”
He added that they demand that concrete measures be taken with regard to calling anti-terrorism police for students, and they condemn the increasingly frequent police violence against students and activists, and they also condemn the criminalization of positions supportive of the Palestinian cause.
