The decision fell on Monday morning: with his back to the wall, the mayor of Lyon finally reluctantly canceled the conference on the situation of the Palestinian territories thirty years after the Oslo Accords, which was to be held on Wednesday at City Hall.
The arrival of Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri deeply outraged the Jewish community.
A look back at four particularly tense days, during which relations between Grégory Doucet and the community were strained.
After several days of controversy and intense tension, the city of Lyon announced on Monday morning that it was giving up the holding of a round table scheduled for Wednesday at the Hôtel de Ville, and in which the French lawyer was to participate. Palestinian Salah Hamouri.
No other choice.
One hour before this decision, Mayor Grégory Doucet received a formal notice from the delegate prefect for defense and security, asking him to cancel this conference for risk of disturbing public order, due to demonstrations and predictable clashes.
"I do it in my role as mayor who must ensure civil peace and harmony in the city", explains the elected official, regretting not being able to "serenely guarantee freedom of expression".
In the morning, Grégory Doucet also sent a letter to the religious leaders of the city.
"I made the decision, in order to remove any ambiguity, to put in writing what it is no longer possible to express in an oral context, in view of the reactions and anathemas suffered by my team", writes -he.
The opportunity to return in four questions to this affair which revolted the Jewish community of Lyon.
What conference are we talking about?
This round table entitled “Thirty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, a look at Palestine” was to be devoted to “the situation of the Palestinian territories” today.
What was it about?
"From an exchange moderated by a recognized academic currently lecturer at Sciences po Lyon", replies Grégory Doucet.
Several "recognized experts in their field" had been invited.
Among them a professor of sociology, a director of an NGO member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, a president of a global movement for human rights.
But also Salah Hamouri.
“These people had agreed to testify in an academic, professional and sensitive way to the reality experienced in the Palestinian territories” supports the mayor of Lyon, defending himself from any bias.
If the Jewish community reproaches him for not having invited any official representative of Israel and for having thus fueled doubts about the state of mind of the conference, the elected official underlines that "no representative of the Palestinian Authority was not invited to this round table", either.
This was not the goal, he recalls: “We never imagined inviting official personalities in order not to export the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, here in France.
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Who is Salah Hamouri?
Arrested for the first time in 2005 by the Israeli security services who suspect him of having wanted to assassinate Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the far-right religious party Shass, the person concerned was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Released in 2011, he began studying law and became a lawyer at the Palestinian bar six years later.
But in 2017, he was again placed in administrative detention for a year.
In 2022, last arrest and new incarceration, "without formal charge" this time.
Finally, on December 18, Salah Hamouri was expelled from Israel to France against his will.
The Jewish state also revokes his permanent resident permit.
If France considers this expulsion “contrary to the law”, Amnesty International strongly condemns it, qualifying it as “deportation”.
"The conditions of detention and deportation to France have been denounced without interruption by the highest authorities of our Republic", recalls the mayor of Lyon to justify this invitation.
How did the Jewish community react?
On Friday, the Chief Rabbi of Lyon Daniel Dahan slammed the door of the "Concorde et Solidarité" body.
A strong act, to mark his strong disapproval.
This group, which brings together representatives of the city's various religions and whose aim is to promote interreligious dialogue, was created by the municipality of Lyon in 2002, after the attack on the Duchere synagogue.
"I cannot give my moral guarantee to people who, instead of promoting peace in the city, will on the contrary stir up community tensions", then justifies Daniel Dahan.
In the process, the European Jewish Organization (OJE), which fights against anti-Semitism, seized the administrative court of Lyon to have the conference suspended, in the name of “the neutrality of the public service”.
A request which was finally rejected Monday by the judge in chambers.
Things don't stop there.
On Sunday, tensions redouble on the occasion of the commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp.
Florence Delaunay, deputy in charge of rights and memory, is strongly shouted down when giving her speech.
Claude Bloch, the last survivor of the camp living in Lyon, turns his back on him in protest, while a participant emerges to grab the microphone and tell him not to pronounce the name of his mother, a former deportee.
Under the boos of the crowd, the chosen one is forced to leave Place Bellecour even before the end of the ceremony.
“The last time that a ceremony of Remembrance gave rise to such an uproar in our region dates back to that day in July 1998 when the associations of deportees prohibited Charles Millon from accessing the Memorial to the Exterminated Jewish Children of Izieu after its agreement with the National Front", recalls Alain Jakubowicz, the president of the Licra (League against racism and anti-Semitism) in Rhône-Alpes, in an open letter addressed to Grégory Doucet, accusing him of "dishonouring the city of Lyons”.
"This shipwreck, you are the one and only responsible", he adds to drive the point home.
Will things calm down?
The Crif de Lyon, council of Jewish institutions in France, which had planned to hold a press conference on Monday afternoon, finally changed its mind, after the announcement of the cancellation of this round table.
But “do not cry out for triumphalism”.
Alain Jakubowicz warns that the “crisis will not end anytime soon”.
“I hope that you measure the opprobrium thrown on our city and due to your only inconsistency”, he launches for the mayor of Lyon.
For his part, Grégory Doucet assures that he retains his "friendship" with the Chief Rabbi of Lyon and "with all those he represents".
“I sincerely hope that he will reconsider his decision, given the importance of interreligious dialogue,” he said in his letter to religious representatives.
But the elected also announces that he will not give up the project to "describe, with all goodwill and people respectful of the democratic framework, the real situation in Israel and Palestine".
The mayor of Lyon has planned to organize “next general public meetings on this theme”, to invite “recognized academics, some living in Israel” in order to “never be silent in the face of injustices or untruths ".
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Lyon: The arrival of lawyer Salah Hamouri provokes an outcry
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Israel expelled Franco-Palestinian Salah Hamouri to France
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