Mathilde Panot is campaigning for France to recognize the State of Palestine within the UN, like 139 other countries.
But does she know how to place it on a map?
Interviewed this Tuesday morning on Public Senate, the deputy for Val-de-Marne and president of the Nupes group in the National Assembly was unable to respond when the journalist asked her if this region was located in the west or the east. east of the Jordan River.
“- Is the State of Palestine located east or west of the Jordan River?”
, asks the journalist, whose name is Steve Jourdin.
Silence.
- Why this question ?
, replies, doubtfully, the MP.
-
To know where you locate the coming State of Palestine.
- We rely on UN resolutions.
- Yes, but physically, geographically where do you locate this State of Palestine?
- I don't understand your question, I rely exactly on the UN resolutions.
- Geographically, it is west of the Jordan?
- But I do not know.
I don’t know what you’re trying to make me say,”
the MP concludes, embarrassed.
“From the river to the sea”
Palestine is located west of the river.
One of the slogans of pro-Palestinian demonstrators all over the world is
“
From the river to the sea
”
.
The “
river
” designates the Jordan, which today demarcates the border between Israel and the West Bank (one of the components of Palestine, north of the Dead Sea) on one side, and Jordan on the other.
“The sea”
means the Mediterranean Sea.
This slogan therefore means that Palestine should, according to the demonstrators, extend over the entire territory from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.
Such a Palestinian state would be more or less the equivalent of historic Palestine, that before the 1947 UN resolution creating the State of Israel.
The sequence recalls the “politically concrete questions” that Jean-Jacques Bourdin, then political interviewer on BFMTV-RMC, asked his guests to gauge their knowledge on a subject.
In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy failed to say that the terrorist group Al-Qaeda was Sunni and not Shiite.
More recently, in 2015, the Minister of Labor Myriam El Khomri got stuck on the question of the number of possible renewals of a fixed-term contract, before admitting not knowing the answer.