PARIS (Dispatches) – 38 French MPs have signed a draft resolution condemning the Zionist regime’s “institutionalization of an apartheid regime against Palestinian people,” news agencies reported.
The draft resolution was originally submitted on 13 July by MP Jean-Paul Lecocq but stirred a public debate on Friday.
Signatories include former presidential candidate Fabien Roussel and deputies from the France Proud party, such as Adrien Katniss, Socialist Christine Pierce-Bonn and Aurelian Tashi and Sabrina Sabaihi of the Green Party.
According to the motion, “Since it was created in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy aimed at establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and expanding its control over the territory for the benefit of Israeli Jews.”
Following the 1967 occupation, the motion adds, “Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
Much to the chagrin of the pro-Zionist lobby in the West, it describes Israel as an “institutional apartheid regime,” blasting the occupying entity for establishing a system of “systemic oppression and control by one group” and committing war crimes against Palestinians under occupation.
“Currently, all territories under Israeli control remain administered with the aim of favoring Israeli Jews at the expense of the Palestinian population, while successive Israeli cabinets have continued to deny the right of return to Palestinian refugees for more than seven decades.”
The resolution also calls for the legalization of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, a transnational, Palestinian-led organization that works to end international support for the regime’s oppression of Palestinians and pressures Tel Aviv to comply with international law.
The draft text urges “imposition of a strict arms embargo” and a French-sponsored resolution to the United Nations Security Council that would impose “targeted sanctions, such as the freezing of assets, on the Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid.”
The signatories call on the French government to “recognize the State of Palestine.”
Jérôme Guedj, a NUPES parliamentarian, attacked the motion for describing the Zionist regime as a ‘colonial entity devoid of legal and moral legitimacy’.