ACRI Lauds French Call to Protect Peace Activists From Retribution
More than 85 prominent French politicians, including more than 60 MPs representing all the major parties in the country, have declared staunch support for an initiative launched by the Arab Council for Regional Integration (ACRI) in Paris this past February. The Arab Council's initiative called upon French lawmakers to provide legislative protection for Arab activists who pursue peace and civil relations between Arabs and Israelis and face prosecution or persecution for doing so. The proposed legislation also calls on the French government to monitor instances of Arab government retribution for citizens calling for peace with Israelis -- and instances of enforcing the so-called “anti-normalization laws,” which ban human contact between Arab populations and Israelis on penalty of imprisonment or execution.
By way of context, the Arab Council for Regional Integration held its founding conference in London in November 2019, with 32 participants representing 15 Arab countries but without a single Israeli in attendance. That conference produced numerous recommendations, at the forefront of which was the passage of laws to counter the criminalization of Arab peace activism. On February 11, a delegation of the Council came to Paris and described its initiative at the French National Assembly, the Élysée Palace, and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Today’s landmark statement from Paris reflects a broad-based, bipartisan French response to the initiative.
The growing list of signatories to the statement, published in Le Point, includes three former Prime Ministers; former Defense and Foreign Ministers; 62 MPs from the left, right and center; numerous Senators; leading public intellectuals and writers; the Mayor of Paris; and an icon of the 1968 French protest movement.
The statement acknowledges the Arab Council’s February testimony; praises its proposals for Arab-Israeli cooperation in science, medicine, media, culture, and the range of civil sectors; and endorses its legislative initiative. The document explicitly calls for protecting Arab Council members, as well as all Arab civil peacemakers who engage with Israelis. The prescriptive component of the statement bears quoting in full:
"... [W]e call on the French government and our European partners to offer international protection to the members of the Arab Council for Regional Integration and, more generally, to the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa who call for peace and dialogue with Israelis. Our diplomatic agents posted abroad should, where appropriate, be mobilized to provide such protection based on the principle of diplomatic inviolability, as recognized by international law. Besides the guarantee of international protection, we also propose the creation of a study group in the National Assembly as well as in the Senate whose mission would be to ensure a legal and technical oversight of the obstacles which Arab proponents of dialogue with Israelis face. Our assemblies could meet every year — notably on the occasion of the Paris Peace Forum — to take stock of the actions undertaken by the Arab Council and the difficulties encountered on the ground by its members to advance their noble projects.
“Strengthened by its historical ties and its diplomatic, military, economic and cultural relations with all the countries of the Arab world, France can play a benevolent role by encouraging the constructive approach of the members of the Arab Council and the projects they carry out. By strengthening our ties with those involved in this rapprochement between civil societies in the Arab world and Israel, our country will be able to weigh more and help enable peace to find its way into a region that so badly needs it.”
In response:
- The Arab Council for Regional Integration commends the French statement, and appeals to all countries around the world to introduce and pass equivalent legislation.
- The Arab Council calls upon all Arab states to preempt a confrontation with governments or parliaments which support the above legislation. That is, rescind all laws that criminalize peace activism or Arab-Israeli civil engagement, and cease all forms of legal sanction or extra-judicial retribution against Arab civil peacemakers. Tactics that should be discarded include branding civil peacemakers as “traitors,” firing them from their posts, inciting against them in the media, hurling accusations of treason and collaboration, and stripping civil peacemakers of their citizenship. The same actions should be adopted by the few Arab countries that have not enacted laws criminalizing civil relations with Jews or Israelis yet mete out retribution summarily.