It is the duty of France to save the Gazaouis that it is able to help

This Friday, August 1, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot declared at the microphone of Franceinfo that he suspended the evacuations of Gaza Palestinians to France, after screenshots of anti-Semitic publications allocated to a Gazaouie student circulated on social networks. This is a particularly unfair decision. Unjust because, even if the accusations against this student would be founded, they in no way oblige France to apply a collective punishment against the Palestinians of Gaza awaiting an evacuation, among which the twenty-six winners of the Pause Program (National Emergency Reception Program of Scientists and Artists in Exile) piloted by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, created in 2017 specifically in 2017 foreign nationals whose life is threatened due to their activities.

These winners are called Ziad, Osama, Ruba, Mahmoud, Duha… They are researchers, filmmakers, poets, writers, or teachers. Like all Gazanis, they live in danger of permanent death. Like the 225 Palestinian journalists whose disappearance has been identified and which represented a window on the world, they are threatened with death because they are the future of Gaza, and from that future, the Netanyahu government and the Israeli far right of Bezabel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir do not want, neither for Gaza, nor for Palestine, since they deny it.

Read too

Interview
Reception of students Gazaouis in universities: “We note that we want to see them coming in France, but the decision returns to the authorities”

The elimination of these actors of Palestinian civil society, a fortiori Gazaouie, participates in the insane project of the Israeli executive whose relentless mechanics were exposed by the International Criminal Court, the United Nations and many NGOs, and several elements meet the criteria established by the Convention for the Prevention and Repression of the Crime of Genocide of 1948. The already dark future of the Palestinian people.

It has been months since the files of the twenty-six Palestinian winners of the Pause program were validated by the Ministries of Higher Education, Research and Culture, but also of Foreign and Interior, which could have « screener » Before granting their validation. It has been months that, despite their accepted files, the twenty-six Palestinian winners of the Pause program are waiting for France to comply with its commitments towards them and evacuate them. In vain. It is for this reason that, on May 19, several personalities of French civil society alerted, in a column published in “Le Monde”, serious dysfunctions in the support of French institutions to this national program, which had not yet resulted in the evacuation of these winners and their loved ones. She also underlined the political and moral responsibility, always current, of France which prides itself on being an influential power in the Middle East.

Despite the reminders made by several collectives and dozens of parliamentarians, these evacuations have still not taken place.

Since then, Ahmed Shamia, an architect who was one of the winners, has been murdered by the Israeli army.

Since then, ” The worst scenario of famine is underway in the Gaza Strip », To use the words of a recent UN press release. In this one, the UN argues that almost 40 % of the population now spends several days without eating and that all children under the age of 5 are exposed to a risk of acute malnutrition, thousands of them already suffering from severe acute malnutrition, the most fatal form of undernourishment. To this must be added the destruction of sanitation and drinking water supply infrastructure, as well as 90 % of health establishments, even though fatal diseases are increasing and the Israeli army is continuing its bombardments, causing more and more dead and wounded.

However, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, said during his Sorbonne speech on May 5, and reaffirmed again to the IMA, on June 5, the urgency of welcoming these people ” In the name of this scientific universalism, twin of European universalism. This vision of things is ours, Ziad, Osama, Ruba, Mahmoud, Duha and the other Palestinian winners of the Pause program are bridges between our societies and keep in them the promise of a desirable world.

This inertia already contrasts strongly with the speed with which the French authorities set up systems aimed at welcoming American academics whose research is threatened by the Trump administration, or the legitimate reception of Ukrainian refugees by European countries. She tended to accredit the Two weights, two measurements Characteristic of Western chancelleries when it comes to Gaza and when it suits the lives of people working for peace.

We are not even there anymore. To decide to suspend the evacuations of Gaza Palestinians on the pretext that a student Gazaouie would have produced reprehensible publications on social networks is to move from inertia to a shameful renunciation.

Such positioning stifles hope and encloses beings in a deadly trap.

We call on the French authorities to do everything to honor their promise to save all the Palestinian winners of the Pause program.

The future of Gaza and Palestine is at stake.

It is the future of the relationships of our societies heir to the Enlightenment with a Near East whose future cannot be written without them.

Signator:

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, essayist and filmmaker

Lilia Ben Hamouda, union activist

Fatma Bouvet de la Maisonneuve, psychiatrist and essayist

Rony Brauman, doctor and ex-president of doctors without borders

Nicolas Cadène, former rapporteur of the Observatory of Secularism

Marc Cheb Sun, author,

Mona Chollet, journalist and essayist

Olivier Deau, doctoral student (Paris 1 Sorbonne, Ladyss)

Fran1cois Duchy, filmmaker

Alain Gresh, journalist and essayist

Cyrille Javary, sinologist and author

William LEDAY, teacher in international relations at Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence,

Imane Maarifi, nurse

Imhotep, composer and producer, for the IAM music group

Bélight Nabli, university professor in public and essayist law,

Roland Nuer, filmmaker

Hassina Machaï, journalist

Christophe Oberlin, surgeon

Dominique Plihon, economist and essayist

Claudy Siar, singer, journalist and producer

Michèle Sibony, essayist and spokesperson for the French Jewish Union for Peace

Eyal Sivan, filmmaker and essayist

Marion Slitine, historian and anthropologist, founder of the Ma’an for Gaza Artists collective

Pierre Stambul, essayist and spokesperson for the French Jewish Union for Peace

Khadija Toufik, journalist

Candice Vanhecke, journalist

Françoise Vergès, author and activist

Audrey Vernon, actress and author