Israel’s embassy in Paris has asked the French Foreign Ministry to resolve delays in the renewal of stay permits for security personnel working for the El Al airline, a spokesperson for Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed to JNS on Tuesday.
The request followed media reports on Monday that French authorities had been holding up renewals for the past six months to punish Israel for its war on Hamas in Gaza, which France has called on Israel to wrap up.
A spokesperson for El Al declined to comment on the matter, referring questions to the Foreign Ministry in Israel, whom she said had sole responsibility over the visas of El Al security personnel. The French Foreign Ministry had not replied to a request for comment at time of publication.
Some agents were in France illegally as a result of the delays, others requested a temporary diplomatic visa from the Israeli embassy in France and others returned to Israel, according to i24 News. The report did not say whether the delays had affected the ability of El Al security staff to carry out their duties.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Tuesday expressed his disapproval of the reported delays, posting on X, “Say it ain’t so, France. Say it ain’t so! What happened to France?”
In a separate incident on Monday, El Al reported that an air traffic controller at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris told an inbound El Al flight “Free Palestine.”
The incident occurred just as the plane was coming into land, Maariv reported.
“El Al takes very seriously the incident that occurred last night, in which a French air traffic controller addressed the company’s pilot in an unprofessional and inappropriate manner. We are working on the issue with the Israeli authorities, who are in contact with the French ones,” the airline said in a statement.
Last week, unidentified persons used a stencil and red paint to leave graffiti that read “El Al genocide airline” at the company’s Paris offices and wrote “Palestine will live, Palestine will win” on the entrance, on which they’d thrown red paint.
French-Israeli relations have deteriorated since Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and triggering an ongoing Israeli military campaign to dismantle Hamas and free all of the 251 hostages the terrorist group had taken.
France said on July 24 that it intends to recognize a Palestinian state in September, leading other European and Western countries to declare the same. France has also imposed an arms embargo on Israel, and French President Emmanuel Macron suggested in November 2023 that Israel’s actions in Gaza were “barbarism.”
