From Brussels, Rima Hassan took a flight to Tel Aviv on February 24. His arrival was scheduled for 3:15 p.m. The Israeli Ministry of the Interior has decided to refuse entry to the MEP LFI. “According to the law in Israel, it is the power of the State to decide who can enter the country and who cannot. Like in France and in all other countries” declares Sabine Haddad, spokesperson for the Civil status and immigration authority, in L’Express. This highly publicized trip raises the question of the reasons why Rima Hassan has chosen to go to a country which she does not recognize, at a time when the region experiences a real turning point towards peace between Israel and its neighbors.
The only link that unites Rima Hassan to this territory is that of its paternal grandparents, they left their village after the Nakba in 1948 to settle in Syria. This country is for her only a utopia on which the European deputy of LFI invests: “In the name of what could I not return to the village of my grandparents?” Was she questioned in 2023 in the program C tonight.
In reality, Rima Hassan could go there and circulate there thanks to his European passport, as many Palestinians have done. But she chose to commit by calling for “armed resistance” against the very existence of the Hebrew state, considering the massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 as a legitimate defense. At the same time, the same year, she made another trip, consistent with her words, in Syria, under the dictatorship of Bashar el-Assad. Rima Hassan justified this trip to be “close to her people”, as she declared on Al-Jazeera Arabic. The deputy then claimed to no longer feel safe in France, after having received death threats because of her support for the Palestinian cause. But was it really more secure in her birth district, Neirab, then controlled with an iron fist by Assad’s intelligence services?
Traveling to Israel, a long time an unforgivable crime for an Arabic
Following the fall of the regime, I returned to my native Syria after thirteen years of distance. Finding yourself in a country without Assad was a real dream. I needed time to realize that I was really in the streets of my youth, those of the first demonstrations against the dictator, and with my own family that I had not seen since 2012. Among the subjects covered during This return, there was that of Israel. In the intellectual environment, some voices now affirm in Syria that the Jewish state is a reality, that it is necessary to normalize relations with it and that it is time to arrest this absurd war. But in jihadist circles, the call to release the Al-Aqsa mosque is extremely present. The Islamists in Syria consider the victory against Assad as the start of the real victory against the Jews. “Patience, patience, Jews, Muhammad’s army will arrive”,, repeated a religious during a demonstration the same day of the fall of Assad.
This position is more and more dominant, especially after the invasion by Israel in southern Syria. The government of Benyamin Netanyahu unanimously approved the decision to occupy the buffer zone and the Golan’s surveillance points, a few kilometers from the Israeli border. For its part, the Syrian authority does not react to any of these actions, which is considered to be the beginning of a normalization of relations with Israel, especially after having retained silence on the visit of the Israeli journalist Ita Anghel. On February 21, the latter published a photo of him smoking shisha in a historic cafe in Damascus. This visit raised a lively controversy on the way in which he entered Syria, given the tense relations between the two countries.
Conversely, traveling to Israel, when you come from an Arab country, has long been an unforgivable crime. Even with a European passport, those who did it were discreet on this journey so as not to be treated with traitors. But since 2020, the year when the Abraham agreements have standardized diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the nationals of these countries are increasingly fulfilling the planes for Tel Aviv, City of cultural diversity, tourism and seduction.
Paletinian cause victim
It was certainly not these reasons that motivated Rima Hassan to take a flight to Ben Gurion airport. She knew that after all her hateful declarations against Israel, she would inevitably be repressed. This was the objective of the deputy for rebellious France. The tragedy between Israel and Hamas is being closed, a ceasefire is in place, hostages are back home and demonstrations against the “genocide” denounced by LFI have lost popularity on the French territory. For Rima Hassan, you had to try something else in order to stage yourself as a star victim of the Palestinian cause: to be refused entry into your historic Palestine. “Looking forward to never see you again,” she replied to the customs officers of Ben Gurion airport before taking the return to Brussels, who took off at 4:10 p.m. It is a pleasure, no doubt, shared by all the Israelis, Jews and Arab, who only wish to live in peace.
* Writer and poet born in Damascus, Omar Youssef Souleimane participated in the demonstrations against the regime of Bashar el-Assad, but, tracked down by the secret services, had to flee Syria in 2012. Refugee in France, he published by Flammarion The little terrorist,, The last Syrian, A room in exile And Be French.
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