In the first weeks that followed 7 October, when Hamas’s killing of 1,400 people in Israel triggered the bloody war with Israel, about a quarter of the pro-Palestine marches registered with the authorities in Germany’s main cities were banned. According to the newspaper Der Spiegel, 90% of those that went ahead had conditions imposed upon them.
In France, it took the intervention of the highest administrative court to stymy a plan by that country’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, to prohibit all protests organised by those calling for a ceasefire. Since then, local prefects are making an assessment on a case-by-case basis.
