France has been criticised for collaboration in the Gaza Palestinians’ forced displacement by supporting Israel, as it was claimed to have facilitated the “voluntary evacuation” of some 115 very well-educated Palestinians from the enclave.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released a tape of what it claimed was a delegation of Palestinians from Gaza waiting at the exiting gate of Ramon Airport in southern Israel. In a statement to the Gaza-based Safa news agency, Euro-Med head Dr Ramy Abdu said the French consulate had cooperated with Israel to “execute a plan to displace Palestinian professionals and their households from the Gaza Strip,” describing the action as harmful.
Their identity and the date they featured in the video remain to be established, though.
Abdu characterised the so-called evacuation program as a forced displacement of Palestinians conducted in complete secrecy and under the direct defence of the Israeli army.
“This process is part of a larger Israeli strategy to evacuate Gaza of its scientific and humanitarian nobility, in cooperation with international players, notably France,” he stated, labelling France’s cooperation with Israel a “blatant breach of international law”. He explained that Palestinians are being assembled at dawn on buses in the centre of the Gaza Strip, then transferred to Ramon Airport under Israeli security.
“There is a rumor that there could be the transportation of them later through the King Hussein Bridge to Jordan,” he said.
The director of the Euro-Med monitor subsequently released an Arabic-language statement, seemingly from the French embassy, outlining travel arrangements to Jordan by bus, along with instructions regarding required documentation upon arrival at the Jordanian border. Additionally, the notice indicates that representatives from the French embassy will meet them before they spend the night at a hotel and depart for France the next day.
A French official on Wednesday confirmed to The Times of Israel that Paris did evacuate over 100 Palestinians from the war-battered territory in alleged “efforts to evacuate French nationals, Palestinians working for France and their relatives or any others with links to the country”.
The official said the group was evacuated due to “health and humanitarian reasons”.
The Euro-Med director remarked that France’s collaboration with Israel is marked by secrecy and a deficiency of transparency, raising “fueling concerns” among Palestinians about the potential complicity of foreign parties in US and Israeli efforts to ethnically cleanse Gaza. “Though Palestinians have the right to pursue safety and refuge, enabling departures without implementing substantial measures to halt Israel’s creation of dire circumstances that drive some Palestinians away from their homeland may, in effect, constitute complicity in Israel’s agenda to evacuate Gaza of its inhabitants.”
