Unlike previous gatherings, the demonstration by the Urgence Palestine Marseille collective is banned this Saturday for “serious risks of disturbing public order”. For the Bouches-du-Rhône police headquarters, “the image of a Palestinian fighter wearing a keffiyeh and equipped with a slingshot breaking a window” does not pass: “Calls for demonstrations do not therefore not limited to commemorating the Intifada of 1987 but clearly aiming to import its logic of confrontation and operating methods to Marseille, and inciting violence,” she said in the prefectural decree banning the demonstration.
The order also highlights the “video calling for the demonstration” in which “the organizers evoke the crimes of Israel, colonialism, apartheid”. “They conclude their call to participate in this demonstration with the slogan ‘Long live the resistance’, a term which legitimizes the terrorist acts committed by Hamas on October 7 in Israel,” the decree continues.
“It is natural for us to commemorate” December 9
For the prefecture, “the slogans chosen by the organizer and the object of the demonstration (…) create such a stir that the risk of clashes between sympathizers and opponents of the Palestinian cause is real in this case”, “at the opposite of other pro-Palestinian demonstrations which took place recently in Marseille”.
The Urgence Palestine Marseille collective called for a demonstration on Saturday from Porte d’Aix to commemorate the 36th anniversary of the first Intifada, which began on December 9, 1987 and ended in 1993.
“The slogans of Urgence Palestine Marseille are clear, writes the collective on Facebook in a post dating from before the decree, and it is therefore natural for us to commemorate such a resistance movement but also to celebrate courage of a people who fight with stones against a colonial army supported by a shameful international coalition. »