These are painful images that woke up the whole world last Saturday. Early in the morning, Israel was rocked by a salvo of terrorist attacks from Hamas, the initial death toll of which rose to more than 1,200. Faced with these events, it is sorrow which prevails among the feelings expressed by the French (44%) over anger (41%), as revealed by the latest Odoxa-Backbone survey for Le Figaro.
Fear, accompanied by firm condemnation, also spread through the French political class. Only La France Insoumise (LFI) still refuses to describe the Palestinian movement as “terrorist”. An attitude that an overwhelming majority of French people disapprove of (86%). The latter, on the other hand, welcome the reactions of LR (75%), RN (71%) and Renaissance (71%), which provided their support to the Hebrew State.
By putting the Hamas terrorist attack and the Israeli response on the same level, the Insoumis also make the positions of their Nupes partners barely audible. Thus, more than half of those surveyed (54%) disapprove of the speech of the Communist Party, whose national secretary, Fabien Roussel, tried to display his “deep disagreement” on the subject with Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
On the other hand, 62% support the position of the Socialist Party (PS), within which several deputies such as Jérôme Guedj have stepped up to denounce the ambivalence of the Insoumis. The rose party must even debate its future this Saturday within the Nupes, during its National Council. Several voices have already been raised on the left to push for an exit, like the PS mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo or the boss of the Occitanie and anti-Nupes region, Carole Delga.
The majority of French people (61%) would in any case like socialists, communists and ecologists to slam the door on the left alliance. This is all the more the case for PS supporters, since three quarters of them (75%) call for this scenario. Only those from the Greens (51%) and LFI (70%) want to see the union continue, despite divisions over the conflict.
The French judge the ambiguity of the Insoumis all the more harshly as 83% of them fear a “resurgence of anti-Semitic acts” in response to the conflict. Since the outbreak of war, more than a hundred acts against the Jewish community have already been recorded in the country, said the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. While the government wants to avoid importing the conflict into France, nearly eight in ten French people (79%) fear an increased risk of “terrorist attacks” on the territory.
Since Saturday, Israeli forces have launched a counter-offensive in Gaza, where the death toll has risen to more than 1,000. The prospect of a “global conflict” worries a little more than half (51%) of those surveyed. An overwhelming majority (81%) of them think that the fighting will lead to a “large-scale conflict” in the Middle East, involving other states.
