A placard equating Zionism with Nazism is displayed at an Oct. 23 pro-Hamas demonstration in the Place de la Republique in Paris. Photo: Reuters/ Valerie Dubois

The chief of police in Paris has said that he will ban a Palestinian solidarity march in the French capital on Saturday, explaining that his decision was based on the pro-Hamas positions of the demonstration’s organizers.

“These are organizations which, through the comments they made, suggest that they are in support of Hamas,” Laurent Nuñez, the Paris Police Prefect, told broadcaster Franceinfo on Thursday. “So I will ban this demonstration.”

Urgence Palestine (“Palestine Emergency”), the umbrella group behind the demonstration, said it would launch a legal challenge to the ban. A spokesperson for the group told the AFP news agency that he was “extremely shocked” by the decision, which he characterized as a “scare tactic” against “people tempted to demonstrate.”

Nuñez, who previously served as France’s National Coordinator for Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism, argued that the nature of the groups sponsoring the march — among them the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated as a terrorist organization by both the US and the EU — amplified the risk of statements supporting “Holocaust denial, antisemitism, and terrorism,” contrary to French law. He also expressed unease with the organizers’ plan to march through Paris, rather than holding a “static rally.”

An earlier attempt by French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin to ban “pro-Palestinian demonstrations” on the grounds that “they are likely to generate public order disturbances” was rejected by the French Council of State on Oct. 18, which determined that protests could only be prevented by police prefects acting on a “case-by-case” basis.

“No ban can be based solely on the instructions of the Minister of the Interior or on the sole fact that the demonstration aims to support the Palestinian population,” the council declared in a statement.

In his interview on Thursday morning, Nuñez was adamant that his decision to ban Saturday’s march was in keeping with the council’s mandate that decisions be made on an assessment of the specific case. “That’s what I did,” he said, adding that his decision to ban marches in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel had been upheld in court.

Antisemitism has surged in France since the Hamas atrocities, with nearly 600 incidents reported and more than 300 arrests made. Reporting on the incidents on Thursday, Le Monde noted that one of them had involved Samuel Lejoyeux, the president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF). While traveling in an Uber and discussing the fears of French Jews on his cellphone, Lejoyeux was overheard by the outraged driver, who ordered him out of the car.

As well as Paris, pro-Hamas demonstrations have been staged in several other French cities, including Rennes, Lille, and Toulouse.