Controversy in Lyon around a conference with Salah Hamouri
The Franco-Palestinian lawyer is accused by Israel of having links with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. What he denies.
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LThe chief rabbi of Lyon announced on Friday January 27 that he was withdrawing from an interfaith group created by the town hall of Lyon. A way for the religious representative to demonstrate against the invitation by the latter of the Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri to a conference on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Oslo Accords. “I cannot give my moral guarantee to people who, instead of promoting peace in the city, will on the contrary stir up community tensions”, explains in a press release Daniel Dahan, to justify his withdrawal from the Concorde body. and Solidarity.
Created in 2002 following the attack on the synagogue in the La Duchère district of Lyon, it brings together representatives of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths. “To leave it or to give reasons for leaving it would be to abandon it on the side of the long road of dialogue that we have maintained for more than 20 years”, regretted in a press release the rector of the Grand Mosque of the city, Kamel Kabtane. .
A conference entitled “Thirty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, a look at Palestine”, under the aegis of the Mayor of Lyon Gregory Doucet (EELV), is scheduled for Wednesday at City Hall. Among the participants in this round table is Salah Hamouri, a Franco-Palestinian lawyer expelled on December 18 by Israel, after several months of detention.
Living since in France, he is suspected by Israel of links – which he denies – with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization deemed terrorist by the Jewish State and the European Union. France had condemned this expulsion, judging it “contrary to the law”. “I changed places but the fight continues. (…) Today, I feel that I have an enormous responsibility for my cause and my people,” Salah Hamouri declared upon his arrival in France.
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Laurent Wauquiez gets involved
In an interview with the regional daily Progress friday, Gregory Doucet, recalling that this conference is “a focus on the Palestinian territories”, defended this invitation: “We invite him for what he is. Someone who knows the situation in the Palestinian territories, who has spent significant time in (…) detention. I do not pass judgment on Israeli justice. I’m also not going to be his lawyer (…) I offer the possibility to people to hear him. »
Anxious to “show that we are not in a partial perspective”, Grégory Doucet, also criticized by part of the local right, had indicated on Wednesday that he had proposed to the representatives “of Jewish authorities or associations in Lyon” to “invite around the table” a representative “of their choice”.
In a letter addressed to Grégory Doucet, of which Agence France-Presse obtained a copy, the LR president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional council Laurent Wauquiez said he was “particularly troubled” by this invitation and asked the ecologist councilor to give it up. “When it comes to a subject as complex and sensitive as that of israelo-Palestinian conflict, this can only be done with respect for the spirit that undermined the conclusion of these agreements (d’Oslo, NDRL): the search for harmony and the quest for peace. A dimension that seems to be lacking here,” he wrote.
Alongside the chief rabbi’s decision, the European Jewish Organization (OJE), which fights against anti-Semitism, told AFP on Friday, through the voice of its lawyer Julie Buk Lament, that it had seized the administrative court of Lyon in interim relief to request the suspension of this conference, in the name of “the neutrality of the public service” and the participation of a “member of an organization recognized as terrorist by France and the European Union”.
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