Photo: European Union

On 13 January 2026, Al-Haq, Union Juive Française pour la Paix (UJFP), NIDAL, Avocats pour la Justice au Proche-Orient (AJPO), Survie, Droits et Mouvements Sociaux (Rights and Social Movements) and Guerre à la Guerre (War on War), filed an appeal with the administrative judge at the French Administrative Court, Consei d'État for abuse of power against the decision of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron to permit an arms fair in Paris held in November 2025, featuring Israeli arms companies, Israeli delegations, and companies that supply arms to Israel.

Although Israel continues to destroy the Palestinian people though bombings, forced displacement, and the systematic destruction of their living conditions ––facts characterised as genocide,–– and while competent international bodies have recognised this characterisation and called for the cessation of arms transfers to Israel, the French government instead made a clear political choice to host the Milipol trade show, held near Paris in November 2025.

Despite our formal notice asking the French authorities to ban several companies, despite domestic and international law prohibiting the maintenance of genocide, the President of France instead publicly upheld the decision to maintain the presence of 30 Israeli arms companies, companies of other nationalities involved in supplying arms to Israel, and permitted the Israeli delegation to attend the Milipol trade fair. In response to this decision, our organisations have filed an appeal with the administrative judge for abuse of power.

Milipol is not a neutral exhibition: it is a platform for the purchase and sale of war, repression and military occupation. Milipol embodies the structural collusion between the state and the arms industry: the company that organises it, Civipol, is 40% controlled by the Ministry of the Interior and 60% by the private companies Thales, Airbus Defense & Space and Idemia. The arms trade Milipol takes part in kills. And today it is killing in Palestinians in Gaza.

In November, the trade fair enabled the direct enrichment of companies whose activities are inextricably linked to the Israeli state regime and its military apparatus. The economic relations forged there, the contracts prepared there, and the political legitimacy offered there have concretely fuelled the commission of international crimes committed by Israel.

By authorising these companies and delegations that deliver or purchase weapons to Israel at the trade show, the French State is not merely turning a blind eye: it is facilitating, protecting, and normalising economic relations that make these crimes possible. This decision directly violates France's domestic and international legal obligations, in particular those requiring it to prevent genocide, prevent any assistance to international crimes, and break the economic circuits that make these crimes possible.

Our action is a continuation of our legal resistance in the global struggle for the liberation of Palestine and the exercise of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. It is part of an international movement against militarisation encouraged by States such as France and Israel, which have made war and repression an economic model –France has become the world's second largest arms exporter, and Israel has doubled its military turnover in five years, including by selling weapons cynically labelled as “battle-tested.”

The arms industry that puts on a show at Milipol, financed at the expense of public services in France, serves both to colonise and exterminate peoples around the world, and to repress, internally, the inhabitants of working-class neighbourhoods, exiles, activists, and human rights defenders.

French and Palestinian organisations are jointly taking this legal action to end the impunity of States and companies that organise and profit from the arms trade, in breach of the most fundamental human rights and values. At the beginning of 2026, as international law is trampled upon, emptied of its substance, and sacrificed on the altar of imperialism and control of resources–– as imperialist States like France unleash and fuel armed conflicts to serve their economic interests and those of multinational arms companies–– we refuse to accept fatalism.

We call for mobilisation of all, from the courts of law to the street. We will continue, at all costs, to use all means at our disposal to legally resist, to denounce mass atrocity crimes, and to uphold the rights of peoples in the face of genocidal settler colonial wars and impunity.