Salah Hamouri has been in exile in France since December 18, 2022 after years of fighting to defend Palestinian rights from his native land, Jerusalem. Despite the obstacles to his freedom of expression, he now pursues the exercise of this right from France.
It is the last day, this April 8 in Morlaix, in Finistère, of an intense tour in the north of Brittany. Intense nervously, but also morally for Salah Hamouri. Suspected by Israel of links – which it denies – with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization deemed terrorist by the Jewish State and the European Union, Salah Hamouri has lived in France since his expulsion from israel in December, deemed “contrary to law” by Paris and qualified by the UN as a “war crime”. All this after a long politico-administrative harassment and after ten years in Israeli prisons.
Since then, many of his detractors have tried to stifle his words: the activist for the Palestinian cause and the rights of the Palestinians, now a former lawyer in an NGO defending Palestinian prisoners, intends at all costs to convey his message, even far of his native land.
The drawn features, the gaze that often seems to be elsewhere, Salah Hamouri is back from Brest where he gathered more than 150 people the evening before around a public conference. Shortly before, he was at the UN headquarters in Geneva and at the European Parliament. He tells his story, but above all his fight to make known the situation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
If his speech seems rehearsed, the emotion is always felt when he recites the figures: ” 4,700 Palestinians are in prison in Israel, 800 in administrative detention, 150 children, 40 women; 1,000 of them are sick, 300 prisoners have spent more than 20 years behind bars, around 40 more than 25 years. Not to mention some of the remains of detainees, which are only returned to their families once the sentence has been fully served.
” Prison in Israel is made to break Palestinians, to rip out human values, to break the morale and psychology of prisoners, but also of families.. And the lawyer to recount the torture he says he suffered, especially during his hunger strikes, ultimate weapon of resistance. A test from which we do not come out unscathed to see the thirty-year-old who, if he is no longer physically tortured, is obviously still psychologically so.
The ex-resident of Jerusalem, of a French mother and a Palestinian father, experienced for more than twenty years, ten years in detention, restrictions of movement, forced separation from his French wife and his two children, the infestation of his phone by the Pegasus spywarethe revocation of his Jerusalem permanent resident card and finally forced exile in France.
A freedom that bears only the name
If France has officially condemned his expulsion, the lawyer does not feel free in France. His positions are disturbing. ” Since my arrival, the attacks and harassment have been continuous, by deputies or pro-Israel organizations, protests Salah Hamouri. They’re trying to take away my right to express myself. »
Because for four months, organizing conferences has been a real obstacle course. At the end of January, the mayor of Lyon canceled a conference in the presence of the Franco-Palestinian lawyer entitled “Thirty years after the signing of the Oslo agreements, a look at Palestine”, for ” ensure harmony “in his city facing the” very strong tensions raised by this event. In Versailles, during a meeting on the Amnesty International report on apartheid, the authorities warn: if Salah Hamouri is present, the meeting will be prohibited. In Nancy, the Meurthe-et-Moselle prefecture in turn canceled the lawyer’s conference in mid-March before the administrative court invalidated the decree. In Brittany, where a security service was deployed and the police on the lookout, everything went normally and the activist’s conferences were full despite the threats, which he continues to deplore.
” France clearly supports the Israeli occupier »
” France has decided to treat Israel as a state above international law, coldly asserts the lawyer. The occupying force acts with total impunity. Israel understood that it had the green light to do what it wanted. »
In 2011, Alain Juppé, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, said about the Franco-Palestinian, then detained for a charge of participation in a plot to assassinate a far-right rabbi: ” The confessions made in court were not corroborated by any evidence “. ” But the more time passes, the less Paris plays an effective role in the region, supports Salah Hamouri. France and Europe have decided not to take a position in favor of international law on the Palestinian question. And the lawyer wonders why Benyamin Netanyahu was Emmanuel Macron’s first guest after his election.
” To be anti-colonial, to be anti-Zionist, to be anti-fascist, all that does not mean to be anti-Semitic “, he gets annoyed, weary. ” Some, for example, try to criminalize the struggle of courageous artists who advocate respect for Palestinian rights, such as Roger Waters [co-fondateur du groupe Pink Floyd, NDLR] ; and that is unacceptable. These voices are very important to us. »
Exhausted, but far from desperate, this is the state of mind in which Salah Hamouri seems to be today. ” I have this chance to be able to express myself. I am not here only to testify, but also to work with the broadest possible solidarity movement. And I want to be the voice, but also the suffering of the prisoners. Neither prison nor deportation will abolish my right to resist. ” This term of deportation, he holds to it: ” In the definition of international law, according to the 4th Geneva Convention, I was deported from Palestine, not expelled. They took away my residence card and deported me, which sets a precedent that bodes well for my compatriots. »
Does he envisage a return to Jerusalem?” I left my soul there. Living there is my right. I will do anything to get that soul back. Maybe not tomorrow, but I’ll go back one day “, he insists before plunging into silence and tears.
During this long day, his phone rings regularly. This time, the smile takes over. He just spoke with some of his former prison mates. A solid and unbreakable bond exists, he says, an essential bond for one who, on his release from prison, barely knew his own brother and sister.