The stance of France's biggest left-wing party France Unbowed (LFI) over Hamas' assault against Israel has left its veteran firebrand figurehead Jean-Luc Melenchon under fire from all sides and created a major rift on the left.
Home to both Europe's biggest Jewish and Muslim minority communities, France is no stranger to robust debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with past wars in Gaza triggering mass protests, mostly in solidarity with Palestinians.
Left-wing parties have previously been united in denouncing Israel for launching mass bombing campaigns on Gaza in response to barrages of rocket fire from the blockaded Palestinian strip.
But Hamas' brutal attacks on civilian targets in southern Israel have shattered the consensus, with Melenchon accused of being an apologist of Hamas for refusing to call it a terrorist group -- including from some left-wing allies.
The attacks on a desert music festival brought back painful memories in France of the November 2015 Islamic State attacks in Paris, which included the massacre of 90 people at a rock concert.
Jews have also been repeatedly targeted in Islamist attacks in France since 2012, with schoolchildren and shoppers at a Jewish grocery among the victims of separate attacks in 2012 and 2015 respectively.
On Saturday President Emmanuel Macron strongly condemned Hamas' "terrorist attacks".
France has also backed Israel's right to defend itself in the wake of the "unjustifiable" attacks, while calling on all sides to avoid an "escalation".
- Parliamentary walkout -
The hard-left LFI's initial statement on the violence set the "armed offensive" by Hamas "in the context of the intensification of Israel's occupation policy" -- remarks widely seen as an attempt to justify the attacks that were heavily criticised.
An unrepentant Melenchon then went on the attack against the French Jewish representative body CRIF, accusing it of trying to silence French calls for peace in the Middle East by organising an Israel solidarity march in Paris, which France Unbowed was the only major party to boycott.
On Tuesday, the party, which has been accused of being soft on Islamists, maintained its line, saying it condemned "all war crimes" but still baulking at the "terrorist" label -- a position that prompted a parliamentary walkout by MPs from the centre and right.
The party's stance contrasted with that of Britain's main opposition Labour party, whose centrist Keir Starmer called the Hamas assault a "terrorist attack".
But it was echoed by other radical left-wing parties, including Spain's left-wing Podemos, which blamed the violence in Israel and Gaza on "occupation and apartheid" and Ireland's nationalist Sinn Fein party, whose former leader Gerry Adams shared a picture on X of a huge Palestinian flag on a hill overlooking Belfast.
LFI emerged as France's biggest left-wing party in 2017 after the collapse of the Socialist Party of former presidents Francois Mitterrand and Francois Hollande.
LFI, the Socialists, the Communists and the Greens are part of a coalition, known as NUPES, which is now being sorely tested.
- 'Useful idiots' -
The Socialists said they were suspending their cooperation with LFI on the drafting of budget proposals for 2024 over the Hamas row.
"You disgust me," Socialist lawmaker Jerome Guedj, usually on warm terms with Melenchon, told LFI, describing them the "useful idiots of Hamas terrorists".
Within LFI itself, the party's stance has also caused unease, with prominent MP Francois Ruffin, seen as a possible presidential contender in 2027, calling for "strong words" to denounce Hamas, which he labelled "a fanatical, terrorist organisation".
Some analysts accused Melenchon of a major misstep, but former parliament speaker and member of President Emmanuel Macron's party Francois de Rugy saw his position as carefully calculated to try woo French Muslims.
In the 2022 presidential election, 69 percent of voters who identified as Muslim voted for the leftwinger.
The LFI's ambivalence on the Hamas attacks "is not at all a slip-up, it's a strategy," de Rugy told Sud Radio station.
"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is merely an opportunity for him to fan the flames of what he believes to be the resentment of people in the French Muslim community so that they vote for him."
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