A controversy has erupted here over the granting of French citizenship to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s representative to France.
Jean-Pierre Pierre-Bloch, a member of the French Parliament, said he was “scandalized to learn” that “a leading representative of a terrorist organization, the PLO, namely Ibrahim Souss, was granted French citizenship.”
Souss, 50, a Palestinian Christian born in Jerusalem, has spent the past 25 years in France. He became the “delegate general of Palestine in France” in 1978 following the assassination of his predecessor, Ezzedin Kallak, by gunmen belonging to Abu Nidal’s terrorist organization.
Reports in January said Souss had received death threats.
The current uproar over Souss began after an official French publication, the Journal Officiel, reported that he had been granted French citizenship.
Pierre-Bloch asked the minister of justice, Pierre Mehaignerie, to rescind this decision, which, he said, “lowers France to the level of a ‘banana republic.'”
Pierre-Bloch said he intended to ask the speaker of Parliament to open an investigation to find out “how this shameful naturalization was performed.”
Pierre-Bloch is a member of the new conservative majority and a vice president of LICRA, the Paris-based International League against Anti-Semitism and Racism.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the fact that Souss was now a French citizen did not interfere with his being a diplomat representing a foreign organization.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
