Anadolu Agency correspondent attacked in Paris

By Yusuf Ozcan and Hajer M'tiri

PARIS

A pro-Israel group Saturday assaulted an Anadolu Agency correspondent in the French capital Paris while covering a rally in support of Palestine.

Hajer M'tiri was attacked as she was photographing the anti-Palestinian rally group members after getting permission from Frech police on the site.

A protester attempted to make her fall down and some other protesters joined the move. Despite M'tiri's immediate complaint, the police remained inactive.

Hundreds of people gathered to celebrate the Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation and called for sanctions against Israel.

Earlier, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and CRIF - Representative Council of the Jewish institutions of France- requested a ban on the rally, arguing it was “anti-Semitic.”

However, Paris Police Prefecture gave a green light to the rally, which it said did not pose a threat to the public order and call for "racism and anti-Semitism".

"We are here to require sanctions against a state which refuses to comply with French regulations (Official Gazette of 24 November 2016)," organizers said in a statement.

According to Palestine’s official statistics agency, Israel has until now appropriated a whopping 85 percent of historical Palestine -- some 27,000 square kilometers -- while leaving only 15 percent to the Palestinians.

The agency went on to note that, since the beginning of 2017, the Israeli authorities had demolished more than 1,341 Palestinian homes and structures in the West Bank and Jerusalem, displacing a total of 1,620 Palestinian residents.

International law views the West Bank and East Jerusalem as "occupied territory" and considers all Jewish settlement-building on the land as illegal.

The Palestinians, for their part, want these areas -- along with the Gaza Strip -- for a future Palestinian state.