From LFI to PS: France’s left races to punish Israel

On Monday, French MPs in committee approved a Socialist Party (PS) proposal to ban imports of goods from Israeli settlements and certain services linked to them. 

Sponsored by PS leader Olivier Faure, the text is set for a full National Assembly vote on 19 November during the Socialists’ reserved day. Passage in committee is no guarantee of success; the issue remains deeply divisive.

The bill would prohibit the import, purchase and sale of products from settlements that France and much of the international community regard as illegal under international law. It also targets services—especially financial and tourist ones—that “contribute to the development or maintenance” of the settlements. 

Penalties for service providers could include up to one year in prison and fines of 5 percent of global annual turnover. Faure insists this is “in no way a general sanction against Israel” but merely the concrete application of France’s long-standing diplomatic opposition to settlements.

The proposal’s political origins are more revealing than its legal pretensions. Faure has spent recent months aligning the PS with the radical and frequently antisemitic positions of La France Insoumise (LFI). An earlier, almost identical text was tabled by LFI deputy Aymeric Caron in October and left unexamined. 

The current version is cosigned by more than 100 deputies from eight groups and won support from the left and the centrist Modem in committee, while Macronist and National Rally (RN) deputies opposed it. Critics on the right called it an “obsession against Israel” and a “meaningless PR stunt.”

Practical objections are substantial. Macronist deputy Sylvain Maillard warned of a “vague penal risk” for companies, arguing the text is imprecise, disproportionate and vulnerable to constitutional challenge. 

Distinguishing settlement-origin goods from other Israeli products is notoriously difficult; the share of French imports that actually come from the settlements is unknown and almost certainly tiny. 

In 2024 Israel accounted for just 0.2 percent of French merchandise imports. Enforcement would rely on decrees that have yet to be written, creating legal uncertainty for French firms while delivering negligible economic effect.

The measure also displays the classic double standard of selective boycott campaigns. Comparable occupation or disputed-territory situations elsewhere attract no similar legislative energy from the same deputies. 

Combined with Faure’s overt courtship of LFI, the bill looks less like principled foreign policy and more like domestic political signalling aimed at a radical left audience the Socialists have largely lost. Whether the full Assembly will indulge that signalling remains to be seen.