Platform of French NGOs for Palestine (Plateforme des ONG Françaises pour la Palestine)

Introduction

Platform of French NGOs for Palestine is a network active in supporting and promoting BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel and lobbying the French government, using French taxpayer funds.

Profile

Country/TerritoryFrance
Websiteplateforme-palestine.org
Founded1993
In their own wordsCreated in 1993 in the context of the Oslo Accords, the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine (The Platform) aims to mobilize organizations for the recognition of Palestinian rights, especially the recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967's borders.

Funding

Activities

  • The Platform is a network composed of 40 French NGOs that are active in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
  • The Platform’s mission includes:
    1. “Raising awareness and informing the public about the rights of Palestinians, and advocating on their behalf to institutions and elected officials.
    2. Being a forum for the exchange of information, meetings, and collaboration between French Palestinian-solidarity NGOs and Palestinians organizations. Being a resource hub through its creation of tools for use by members and partners.
    3. Improving the capabilities of activists working on issues related to the rights of the Palestinians and the development of Palestine.”
  • PFP lists on its website in the section “Palestine our elected officials …,” “an initiative of the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine”, elected officials who intervene on the Palestinian issue through written questions to the government, proposals for resolution, of positions, calls ect. PFP indicates that “several mobilization campaigns were launched by the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine and / or solidarity associations with Palestine, to which the French parliamentarians responded.”
    • According to PFP President Claude Léostic, PFP is active in “lobbying our elected officials and the government: our approach is very often to bring in Palestinian and sometimes Israeli partners so that they can speak directly to our executives.”

Political Advocacy

BDS

  • Active in BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel, despite the fact that anti-Israel boycotts are prohibited in France.
  • Although PFP claims that its “campaigns are not part of the BDS movement,“ according to President Claude Léostic, “of course we support it, and we believe that it is a popular, a peaceful way, of expressing an opinion.”
  • PFP is a member of the Don’t Buy into Occupation coalition, a “joint project between 25 Palestinian, regional and European organisations based in Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom (UK), and Palestine” that “investigate[s] and highlight[s] the financial relationships between business enterprises involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and European Financial Institutions (FIs).” Other pro-BDS NGOs involved in the campaign include Al-Haq, Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS), European Legal Support Center (ELSC), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), and The Rights Forum.
    • In November 2024, as a member of the Don’t Buy into Occupation coalition, PFP published a joint report alleging “the extensive involvement of over 800 European financial institutions in companies aiding and abetting the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The NGOs called on “financial institutions to adopt heightened due diligence measures, using their leverage to ensure clients and investee companies comply with international law and divesting from those that fail to do so. It also calls on businesses involved in the Israeli settlement enterprise to withdraw from settlements and halt any contributions to their establishment, expansion, or maintenance.”
    • In June 2024, Don’t Buy into Occupation published a joint report titled, “The companies arming Israel and their financiers,” claiming to “expose the largest European financial institutions investing billions of euros in international arms producers that sell weapons to Israel.”
    • In December 2023, Don’t Buy into Occupation jointly published a report on “European Financial Institutions’ Continued Complicity in the Illegal Israeli Settlement Enterprise.” The report called for financial institutions to “Take action to end financial support for companies active in the settlements in the OPT, either through strictly time-bound engagement or through responsible divestment.”
    • In September 2021, as part of the campaign, the coalition of NGOs published a report purporting to “investigate and expose the financial relationships between businesses involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and European Financial Institutions (FIs).” The report called for European governments to “prohibit the import of illegal settlement products and services from entering European markets, and ban trade with and economic support for illegal Israeli settlements.”
  • Together with the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) coordinates the “Made in Illegality” campaign in France, which calls upon France to end its economic relations with Israeli settlements. The campaign’s demands include banning French import of all “settlement products,” discouraging French companies “from investing in settlements,” and preparing information for travelers “to ensure that they avoid supporting companies and tourist sites that are located in the settlements.”
  • In September 2025, PFP published a joint report titled, “Trading with Illegal Settlements: How Foreign States and Companies Enable Israel to Implement Its Illegal Settlement Policy.” The report called on countries to “ban all commercial activity with illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including those of major multinational corporations and financial institutions supporting the settlement project.”
  • In July 2025, PFP urged France to “refuse to continue to maintain any commercial relations with Israeli settlements…It must follow its European neighbors in concrete actions, like nine EU member states having asked the European Commission to put an end to trade with Israeli settlements established in the occupied Palestinian territories, or like Ireland, which has proposed legislation also aimed at banning this trade.”
  • In May 2025, PFP was a signatory on a statement calling on France to “use all available levers of action to pressure the Israeli government to stop the ongoing genocide, including imposing sanctions against members of the Israeli government, banning trade in products from Israeli settlements, calling for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, and suspending deliveries of weapons and military components to Israel.”
  • In February 2025, PFP signed a letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, calling to “ban all trade and business between the EU and Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem.”
  • In January 2025, PFP called on France to “affirm the illegality of the Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to indicate what measures it intends to take to oppose the situation of apartheid, to prohibit trade relations with the settlements and to request the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.”
  • In November 2024, PFP was a signatory on a statement urging France to “ban trade with Israeli settlements.”
  • In September 2024, PFP was a signatory on a statement calling to “suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement.”
  • In May 2024, PFP was a signatory on a statement claiming, “Diplomacy must impose silence on weapons. To exert pressure, France can recall its ambassador to Israel, embargo all military exports to Tel Aviv or push to suspend the association agreement between the European Union and Israel. In short, get out of a guilty wait-and-see attitude. The world is watching us.”
  • In November 2023, PFP was a signatory on a statement urging states to issue a “Two-Way Arms Embargo on Israel,” demanding that “The US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and other States that authorise the continued transfer of arms, and other forms of military support to Israel to immediately bring an end to such transfers…and immediately halt the provision of any materiel, equipment or other commodity that may foreseeably be used in the commission of serious international law violations including international crimes.” 
  • In February 2023, PFP published a press release calling on France to “pursue a policy of clear differentiation aimed at excluding entities and activities related to Israeli settlements from its bilateral relations with Israel, by prohibiting the import and marketing of products and services from the colonies.”
  • In September 2022, PFP was a signatory on a letter to the European Union to “review its decision to revive the Association Council Meeting, stop the recently signed gas deal and review its bilateral cooperation programmes.” According to the call, “Instead of allowing Israel to entrench its colonial enterprise and apartheid regime, rewarding it with further economic cooperation and trade of harmful military equipment and technologies, the EU and its Member States have an obligation, and interest, to hold Israel accountable and put an end to impunity.”
  • In March 2022, PFP was a signatory on a campaign to “call for sanctions on apartheid Israel.” The campaign called for: 
    • “Investigating Israeli apartheid and reactivating the UN mechanisms to combat apartheid to impose targeted sanctions on Israel, including military embargo.”
    • “governments to ban and shops and supermarkets to deshelve products from Israel’s illegal settlements and campaign to end contracts and investments in companies supporting these settlements, particularly those listed in the UN Database.”
    • “Holding institutions that promote our dispossesion, such as the so-called “Jewish National Fund” (JNF), accountable and join efforts to uncover their complicity with ethnic cleansing, illegal settlements and apartheid against the Palestinian people.” 
  • In February 2022, PFP participated in a campaign titled “#StopTradeWithSettlements” calling “for an EU law that will end trade with illegal settlements once and for all.”
  • In August 2021, PFP signed a letter to the States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty calling to “put an end to Israel’s notorious use of arms and military equipment…by immediately imposing a comprehensive two-way arms embargo on Israel.” According to the letter, “This systematic brutality, perpetrated throughout the past seven decades of Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, pro-longed illegal belligerent occupation, persecution, and closure, is only possible because of the complicity of some governments and corporations around the world.”
  • In September 2020, PFP called for the UN General Assembly to “Launch international investigations into Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole, as well as associated State and individual criminal responsibility,” to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” and “Prohibit all trade with illegal Israeli settlements and ensure that companies refrain from and terminate business activities with Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.”
  • In June 2018, PFP, alongside Al-Haq, Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS), International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), and Ligue des droits de l’Hommes (LdH), published a report, “The Jerusalem light-rail and how French companies contribute to the settlement of Occupied Palestinian Territory,” despite French court rulings that building the Jerusalem Light Rail is not illegal. The report calls for  French companies Systra, Egis, and Alstom  to “terminate their contracts with the Israeli authorities” and urged the French State “to take all the measures needed to ensure that the three public operators, SNCF, RATP and CDC, terminate the contracts signed in the context of the implementation of the Jerusalem tramway, by the companies they control, SYSTRA and Egis; and to take all the measure needed to prevent any participation or investment by French companies that would contribute to Israeli settlement.”
    • Following the report, PFP published a press release “salut[ing]” the announcement by the CEO of SNCF that “Systra is withdrawing from the red and purple line of the Jerusalem light-rail” and referring to it as “a first victory on a just path.”
  • In March 2018, PFP promoted an event by BDS France to learn about “The importance of cultural and university boycotts.”
  • PFP was a signatory to a 2017 statement calling for “the suspension of the EU’s Association Agreement with Israel” and on the international community “to cease all complicity with continued settlement activity and the myriad of ways that Israel violates international law.” The statement condemns the 1947 UN partition plan, claiming it “resulted in the 1948 Nakba, the demolition of more than 530 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland, and is thus a process of ethnic cleansing”; and claims that European countries “made Palestine carry the consequences of the monstrous genocide of the European Jews by the Nazis; and subsequently they did nothing to require that Israel respect UN resolutions.”
  • In 2017, PFP published “12 misconceptions about BDS” which claimed to “present the most common misconceptions about BDS, and elements of explanation to fight against these false claims.” This document refers to the list of deputies and senators so that the reader can question his political representatives on this subject.
  • In April 2017, PFP campaigned to have Israeli soccer clubs based in West Bank settlements expelled from FIFA.
  • Called for the suspension of the European Union-Israel Association Agreement.
  • In a questionnaire sent to candidates for the 2017 presidential election, PFP asked “the next French government to repeal a circular [circular making the boycott and call for boycott illegal in France].”

Training Sessions for the Public and Activists

  • PFP regularly organizes an “Educational Workshop” titled “Living Palestine,” which “offers an interactive teaching tool to understand the daily lives of Palestinians.” The workshop, based on controversial sources that it considers “internationally recognized,” including highly biased and politicized NGOs BADIL, B’Tselem, Who Profits, and Al-Haq, “gives the opportunity to the participants … to be confronted with the situations of waiting, the administrative dependency and the arbitrary, which ‘punctuate’ the lives of the Palestinians.” (Read NGO Monitor’s analysis in French “A pro-Palestinian association organizes a partial role play at the expense of the taxpayer.”)
    • The workshop was funded through the support of AFD, the Île de France Region, Fondation de France, and Secours Catholique-Caritas France.
  • PFP regularly organizes training sessions for its members to “reinforce the skills of those working to further the cause of Palestinian rights and the development of Palestine.” Topics of trainings have included: “lobbying European representatives on questions regarding human rights of Palestinians,” “the International Criminal Court and Palestine,” and “defending free speech and lobbying for Palestine.”
  • In September 2017, PFP published the booklet “Palestine / Israel – Instruments to argue” with the support of AFD. This one-sided booklet claimed to provide the necessary tools to “anyone who is concerned about respect of the law and is interested in Palestine,” and in particular to those confronted “with this type of affirmations”:
    • “The Wall is a security barrier, since its construction, the attacks have greatly decreased;” “the Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem enjoy the same rights and benefits as the Israeli inhabitants of West Jerusalem;” “other conflicts exist in the world, far more deadly than the situation in Palestine;” “Israel is considered the ideal villain.” (Read NGO Monitor’s analysis in French “AFD funds militant material to an anti-Israeli organization.”)
  • In August 2018, PFP published a documentary, “Without laughs, games under surveillance,” produced in 2010 with AFD support. The documentary omits the context of Israeli security concerns, including Palestinian violence and terrorism. The film further demonizes Israel while exploiting Palestinian children for political gains (See NGO Monitor’s report, “A propaganda documentary funded by the Quai d’Orsay and AFD exploits young Palestinians.”)
  • In July 2018, with the support of AFD and the Fondation de France, PFP published a pamphlet, “Palestine: Nakba’s permanent displacement,” that promotes a Palestinian “right of return.”
    • The pamphlet contained many historical and factual errors, such as the claim that the UN’s 1947 Palestine-sharing plan was “rejected by Arabs and Jews,”1 or that “the use of the word ‘Nakba’ is still prohibited in Israeli textbooks.”2
    • The pamphlet falsely accused Israel of forcibly displacing Palestinians, claiming that “the Nakba is an ongoing process” (emphasis added).
    • The pamphlet also supported a Palestinian right of return, accused Israel of forced displacements, and called for Israeli officials to be brought before the ICC.

François Leroux

Claude Léostic

Selected Platform Members

Partners

Footnotes

  1. According to the UN, “The Jewish Agency accepted the resolution … The Plan was not accepted by Palestinian Arabs and Arab states.”
  2. A 2016 report from the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) stated that “Some Israeli textbooks also explain the controversial term “Nakba” (catastrophe), the name given by some Palestinians to the 1948 War, as an explanation of the past and current Palestinian view.”

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