Jerusalem (AFP)

"I don't like what you did in front of me," French President Emmanuel Macron shouted to an Israeli policeman in Jerusalem on Wednesday, recalling a scene by Jacques Chirac almost a quarter of a century earlier in the same places.

Chaining handshakes and "selfies", the French president improvised a stroll in the Old City of Jerusalem, after talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.

The president had not planned to wander in several districts of the Old City but only to go to the Sainte-Anne basilica, French territory, where a first clash had taken place between members of the group in charge of his security and an agent Israeli security forces who wanted to enter the church.

But at the entrance to the Basilica of Saint Anne, where members of the Israeli security forces were stationed, the atmosphere suddenly changed. "I don't like what you did in front of me", said Macron to an Israeli policeman standing in front of him in the church entrance .

"Go outside please, nobody has to provoke anyone, is that understood?" Said Mr. Macron in English. "We stay calm, we have done a wonderful walk, you do a good job in the city and I appreciate it, but please respect the rules established for centuries, they will not change with me, I can tell you, "he added.

"It's France here, and everyone knows the rule", underlined, still in English, the French head of state, whose verbal altercation recalls that in 1996 of Jacques Chirac in the same district of Jerusalem- East.

- On Israeli channels -

The former French president got angry in 1996 against Israeli soldiers who framed him too closely by launching his now famous "Do you want me to go back to my plane?" (Do you want me to get back on my plane?), Before demanding that the soldiers leave the Sainte-Anne domain.

After his famous sentence, Jacques Chirac went to the esplanade of the Mosques. Called Noble Sanctuary by Muslims, Temple Mount by Jews, the Esplanade of the Mosques is the third holiest site in Islam and the most sacred site for the Jews.

After meeting religious at the Sainte-Anne basilica, Emmanuel Macron went, like Chirac, to the Esplanade. He then went to the Wailing Wall, black kippah on his head, for his first visit to the Holy Land since his election in 2017.

The Israeli media has taken over the incident of the French president. On the front page of news on Israeli radio channels, it also sparked reactions on social networks in Europe, Israel and the Arab world.

"Another incident with a French president in Jerusalem," said the presenter at the opening of the news on the Israeli public channel Kan.

The images of Jacques Chirac in anger in Jerusalem had resurfaced from the archives when he died last September. "The passage through the Old City was very calm and warm, several traders elsewhere remembered the passage of President Chirac," Macron said at the end of the day.

But when I arrived at the Sainte-Anne basilica, "there was a moment of nervousness between the security teams, and it was up to me to put it in order," explained the president, saying that he greeted "warmly" by following the Israeli guards. "The parenthesis has been closed," he said.

During the Chirac incident in 1996, Israel was led by a young Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also in power today, who may one day say that he lived through the "Chirac" and "Macron" moments.

© 2020 AFP