Why France’s new mayors are already on trial over Gaza

The 2026 municipal elections revealed something new in France. Candidates from immigrant backgrounds were no longer just symbols of republican inclusion. In a remarkable number of cities, they were winning.

Notably, Bally Bagayoko was elected as mayor in the commune of Saint-Denis – situated in the suburbs of Paris - in the first round. His supporters, celebrating at the town hall, chanted, “We are all the children of Gaza.” The following morning, a journalist asked Bagayoko on national TV whether Saint-Denis had elected a mayor or a Gaza proxy.

During the same programme, a fabricated quote about him calling the commune “the city of Black people” was also repeated. But Bagayoko had actually described it as “the city of kings and living people.”

A local electoral result had immediately been placed within a geopolitical context.

We’ve heard it all before

Indeed, the script was predictable. Muslim voters, we are told, have driven the Gaza genocide into local politics. Identity has replaced class. Communalism has entered the polling booth. Local democracy has been overshadowed by foreign conflict.

What this reading overlooks, of course, is the larger redeployment at play. Gaza did not simply enter municipal politics randomly. Over the past two years, a geopolitical conflict has increasingly acted as a local screening process that determines who can represent whom, on what terms, and at what cost.

For decades, the representation of France’s banlieues relied on delegation. Parties chose minority candidates, vetted them internally, and presented them as proof that the Republic could incorporate difference on its own terms. These areas could be governed because they were not expected to develop autonomous political voices. Their role was to be represented, not to redefine representation.

La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) disrupted that arrangement. Not because it stood outside electoral calculations, it did not, but because it created a channel through which working-class suburbs with large communities from immigrant backgrounds could express themselves and be heard, without relying solely on the old gatekeeping structures of traditional parties, municipal notables, and diversity brokers.

What unsettled the French political landscape in March was not only that candidates from immigrant backgrounds won, but also that they seemed less dependent on the traditional system of delegated representation.

Weaponising antisemitism

This shift poses different threats to various actors, but the convergence remains real. For the far right, it disrupts a long-established pattern. Immigrant and Global South populations are useful as labour, tools of discipline, and symbols in culture wars, but they are seen as dangerous when viewed as autonomous political subjects. For the Israel lobby and their supporters, these local victories endanger their ability to define the boundaries of acceptable discourse on Gaza and Israel.

For parts of the economic and political establishment, the problem is even wider. Populations long restricted to low-wage jobs, urban marginality, and controlled representation are easier to exploit than those that start to act with greater political autonomy. The same order that benefits from their labour does not welcome their independent political speech.

This is why the defence of Israel has become so politically useful across different camps. For the far right, condemning assumed Muslim electoral assertiveness as antisemitic provides a way to reuse old racist colonial fears within a new moral framework. For establishment figures, it is a way to discredit suburban political independence without explicitly referring to race or class dominance.

Since 7 October, local victories in Banlieue-based constituencies have increasingly been viewed through the lens of antisemitism. Municipal elections in these areas are no longer primarily judged by housing, schools, public services, or urban inequality. Instead, they are evaluated through a foreign-policy perspective.

This sorting assumes an institutional form.

Since 2021, publicly funded associations in France have been legally required to adhere to “republican values”. Although this obligation is portrayed as neutral in theory, in practice, it has contributed to increased scrutiny of organisations perceived to be too close to Muslims or too vocal on Palestine.

These practices didn’t just develop overnight following Israel’s most recent war on Gaza, however. France has a longer record of trying to police speech on Palestine. Anti-BDS prosecutions were pursued for years before the European Court of Human Rights ruled that convicting activists for calling for a boycott of Israeli products violated freedom of expression.

More recently, deterrence rather than punishment has been used to suppress Palestine solidarity. The dissolution of Palestine Vaincra was significant, not only because the Conseil d’État (France's highest court of administrative justice) upheld it, while emphasising that anti-Zionism was not in itself antisemitism, but also because it demonstrated how political speech could be reinterpreted through imputable risk, third-party comments, and administrative liability.

Similarly, proceedings against Urgence Palestine widened the scope of intimidation before any final sanction was imposed. MP Caroline Yadan, and her legislative attempts to further institutionalise conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism follow a similar pattern. Whether or not her dangerous proposals pass is irrelevant. The important thing is that such efforts aid in the policing of speech criticising Israel.

The desired outcome by the pro-Israel lobby isn’t necessarily the conviction of individuals speaking out about Palestine and organising solidarity, but rather the self-censorship that follows attacks and witch-hunts.

This is precisely why municipal politics matter, and how geopolitics influences the city, not only through speeches or foreign-policy statements, but through the everyday channels that determine who gets funded, who is invited to speak, who is treated as a legitimate partner.

Saint-Denis made that visible in real time. The question asked to Bagayoko on TV was not an isolated incident. It is a reflection of how some political victories in France are no longer judged solely by how they will shape the future of local communities, but by who delivers them.

A broader transformation of liberal rule becomes clearer through these populations. When political systems lose their redistributive capacity and become less able to absorb conflict through representation, they increasingly govern by filtering, selective access, and moral vetting. The issue is no longer only about who is represented. It is about who is considered representable without suspicion.

That is why the usual interpretation of the “Muslim vote” misses the point. The main concerns for voters are housing discrimination, school tracking, police violence, limited mobility, and bureaucratic indifference. What many describe isn’t a desire to import a foreign conflict into French politics but a much simpler feeling: “I vote to protect us”. Protection, not separatism. A defensive use of the ballot in a civic space where participation is already met with suspicion.

Gaza enters the scene much later, but once it does, it changes the terms of public judgment. It allows far-right actors, pro-Israel networks and sections of the establishment to recode local democratic outcomes as signs of civilizational danger. Antisemitism, which should absolutely be called out and tackled in a climate of rising hate, is instead conflated with anti-Zionism and used as a sorting mechanism for local political legitimacy.

France is certainly not unique. In Germany, for example, Palestinian solidarity has repeatedly been treated as a civic-security problem rather than simply as protected political speech. In the Netherlands, Palestinian NGOS are forced to recognise Israel in order to access funding.

France exemplifies this shift particularly starkly. A democracy that demands some citizens to prove their loyalty before recognising the legitimacy of their vote is altering the very meaning of belonging. Once that process begins, the issue is no longer just Muslim exclusion; it is the erosion of democratic legitimacy itself.

Amel Boubekeur is a tenure track professor at Aix-Marseille University, where she holds the research chair “Geopolitical Turmoil and Social Transformations in the Mediterranean.”

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