“You are a disgrace.” “You lie to excite the street.” “You are unworthy.” On Monday, at the National Assembly, it was under an avalanche of invective and in a noxious atmosphere that Mathilde Panot concluded her speech on the situation in the Middle East. Red with anger, the boss of the Insoumis group returned to her place, to the applause of the parliamentarians of her camp, and to the exasperated cries of those of the majority and the right of the Hemicycle.
For ten minutes, she has just stormed against the executive, which she accuses of being “aligned with the United States and the far-right Israeli government” “Darmanin’s France has become the country where the only crime of Benzema is to be called Karim,” she also said, in reference to the comments of the Minister of the Interior against the French international, whom he accuses of being linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. The end of the intervention of the Insoumise in Chief is inaudible, completely covered by the indignation of a large part of the Hemicycle.
These debates, convened by the Prime Minister under article 50.1 of the Constitution, were expected. Already mentioned during the last two government question sessions, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen the political class torn apart since the Hamas terrorist attack more than two weeks ago.
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This weekend, the invectives between political figures reached a level rarely seen on that “Israel is legitimate in defending itself, while respecting international law.” A sentence which fueled the very strong anger of the rebels, including the omnipresent Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “Meanwhile, Madame Braun-Pivet is camping in Tel Aviv to encourage the massacre,” he targeted, regretting that the occupant of the perch does not have “a word of compassion for the populations locked up in Gaza” .
“I am convinced that the word “camper” was not chosen by chance (by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Editor’s note). And the fact that I “favor massacre” is a new target that is being put on my back. It’s very serious,” Yaël Braun-Pivet reacted on Monday morning on France Inter.
In the Hemicycle, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s remarks are firmly denounced by several speakers, including LR MP Michèle Tabarot. “Shame on those in this Chamber who refuse to call them terrorists (Hamas), who dare to describe these criminals as resistance fighters, who are breaking down the dikes of anti-Semitism,” reprimands the elected representative from Alpes-Maritimes, to a large ovation shunned by the ranks of the left.
A little earlier, the Prime Minister spoke at length. Recalling France’s historical position of a “two-state solution”, Élisabeth Borne condemns those who “minimize, justify or even absolve terrorism”. “We must show no ambiguity in the face of such crimes (…). Those who confuse the Palestinian right to statehood with the justification for terrorism are committing a political and moral error. (…) They do not serve the Palestinian cause in any way,” she also says, despite numerous questions from LFI parliamentarians.
The session is also marked by the speech of the president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Assembly, the MoDem deputy Jean-Louis Bourlanges. “The aggression carried out by Hamas is both terrorist, constituting a generalized war crime and backed by a discourse of an assumed genocidal nature,” he says.
Before also condemning “Israel’s colonization policy”. As one man, all the elected representatives of Nupes stand up and give the majority parliamentarian a standing ovation. His comrades are more mixed: if some applaud frankly, others do not hide their disapproval… A sign that even in the ranks of the majority, the Israeli-Palestinian question is indeed divisive.
