Honorary citizenship of Paris to the Palestinians: Ian Brossat defends “the right to exist” of the Palestinian people

ByMuhammad

The day after the vote by which the Council of Paris granted honorary citizenship to Palestinian civilian populations and journalists, Thursday June 18, the senator from Paris and national spokesperson for the French Communist Party, Ian Brossat, welcomed a decision that he considers to be an act of justice and solidarity towards the Palestinian people. Speaking after the adoption of this deliberation, the Parisian elected official affirmed that this vote constituted a strong political message addressed to the Palestinians. “We tell the Palestinian people that they have the right to live with dignity and freedom from occupation and colonization. And we are proud that Paris can say it”he declared.

Ian Brossat rejected speeches which, according to him, tend to blame the Palestinians for their situation. “We do not approve of the idea that Palestinians are guilty of their own misfortunes. We do not agree with the idea that the Palestinians experienced some form of waking dream until October 7, 2023, which they somehow ruined.”he said. The senator also recalled that the suffering of the Palestinian people cannot be reduced to recent events. According to him, they find their origin in the Nakba of 1948, when“around 700,000 men, women and children were deprived of their land, their homes and pushed onto the roads of exile”. He considered that this suffering is rooted in “the denial of the right to self-determination” and in “the denial of the right of the Palestinian people to exist as a people, as a nation, as a state”.

For Ian Brossat, the attribution of this honorary citizenship amounts to reaffirming the existence and rights of the Palestinian people. “By voting for this honorary citizenship, we are saying that the Palestinian people have the right to exist”he said, adding that Gaza residents “are not condemned to live in a death hall” and those in the West Bank “are not doomed to be attacked every day by settlers supported by a far-right government”. Also referring to the situation in East Jerusalem, he denounced the evictions of Palestinian families from their homes, saying that the city’s residents “are not doomed to be driven from their homes, those of their parents, their grandparents and their great-grandparents.”

Concluding his intervention, Ian Brossat reaffirmed the meaning he attributes to this decision of the Council of Paris: “We tell the Palestinian people that they have the right to live with dignity and freedom from occupation and colonization. And we are proud that Paris can say it. »

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Muhammad

Muhammad is a visionary thinker and passionate writer who has been contributing to Understanding Islam for several years.