(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) A decision to dedicate a beach festival event in Paris to Israel's Tel Aviv city has sparked outrage among leftist politicians and pro-Palestinian groups, who have termed the gesture as "indecent".
Every summer, the French capital turns the banks of the Seine River into a beach and organizes a week-long Paris Plages festival. The festival plans to celebrate "the Tel Aviv culture" for a day this coming Thursday.
Paris City Councilor Danielle Simonnet, who belongs to the Left Party (Parti de Gauche), slammed the Paris municipality's plan to honor the Israeli city.
"Just one year after the massacre in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army, and even as the Israeli government intensifies its policy of settlement construction" Paris City Hall dares to organize 'within the framework of its cultural partnerships with the world's largest cities' a day honoring Tel Aviv," Simmonet wrote on her official blog on Saturday.
In an interview with French Inter radio on Monday, she added: "For the Israeli government, this is a nice bit of PR [public relations] that Paris is serving up on a plate."
Pro-Palestinian group CAPJPO-Europalestine called on Parisians to protest the event and write to French authorities to stop the plan.
"It is out of the question to allow such an immoral event to go ahead in a public space," the group said on its Facebook page on Monday evening.
"It is not about religion but about international law, human rights and human dignity," the group added.
Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) France, a national coalition that supports the Palestinian campaign for boycott, also opposed the event.
"One year after Israel's 'Operation Protective Edge' in Gaza, less than one month after the Israeli parliament voted to authorize the force-feeding of prisoners, one week after the latest colonial violence burned alive the members of the Dawabsha family in Duma in the occupied West Bank, killing 18-month old baby Ali, the incursion of Tel Aviv onto Paris Plage is a real provocation," BDS France said in a statement on Monday.
"Tel Aviv is not a city like others," BDS France said, adding, "it is built on top of the ruins of seven Palestinian villages."
The Association of France-Palestine Solidarity (AFPS) said that the event was "a communication campaign with a bitter taste...a very strange way to echo the massacres of last summer."
"How can you refer to the sweetness of Tel Aviv without mentioning the fact that West Bank Palestinians have no access to Gaza beaches? The fact that they live under a daily threat of Israeli Navy drones?" the AFPS said in a letter to the Paris mayor.
According to the Paris municipality's website, the aim of the event was to allow people to live in an "atmosphere" of the city of Tel Aviv, which it claimed was a "symbol of tolerance and peace."
An online petition urging the Paris mayor to cancel the event gathered more than 19,000 signatures by Tuesday afternoon.
However, Paris Deputy Mayor Bruno Julliard disagreed and said that there were no plans to change the event.
On Tuesday, Julliard told French radio RMC: "We are inviting a city, we are not endorsing the policy of a state."
"We will not cancel this event because it would be to agree with radicals," he said. "We do not want to punish the population and cities that strive for peace," he added.
Last July, Israel's offensive on the Gaza strip killed more than 2,000 Palestinians and injured another 11,000, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Since 2007, Israel and Egypt have blockaded the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air.
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