They braved the rain of that wintry afternoon. Demonstrators marched in Paris on Saturday to express their "solidarity with the people of Gaza" and demand an end to the Israeli army's bombardment of Palestinian territory.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which entered its 64th day on Saturday, was sparked by a bloody and unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7 on Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip.
According to Israel, 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the attack, in which about 240 people were abducted and taken to the small Palestinian territory, 138 of whom remain in captivity.
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Hamas' health ministry on Friday reported some 17,490 deaths in the Israeli shelling, more than 70 percent of them women and children and youth under the age of 18, as well as tens of thousands wounded. Le Parisien is unable to independently verify these figures.
"A life is worth a life"
In the procession from République to Nation, where more than a thousand people braved the rain gathered, slogans such as "Immediate stop the bombing" and "Israel is murdering the children of Palestine" were chanted.
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"Imagining her colleagues working without water, without electricity, amputating without painkillers under bombardment, with armed soldiers entering health facilities is revolting," says Nora (she did not give her name), a member of the "Caregivers for Gaza" collective. "We support civilians, not Hamas. A life is worth a life," adds the 30-year-old caregiver.
Another Gathering
Gaël Quirante, a member of the leadership of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), one of the organizations calling for the demonstration, believes that "it is not at a time when Israel is intensifying its bombing and its massacre of the people of Gaza that we must (stop) the initiatives of the street."
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"On the contrary, we must continue to denounce the lead of the State of Israel" and "the conflations that make some people want to equate support for the people of Gaza with anti-Semitism," he argued.
A rally was also held at the same time in front of the Sorbonne, gathering a few dozen people behind a banner reading "Stop the massacre in Gaza, immediate ceasefire".