PARIS, Oct 17, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Tuesday that a hard-left lawmaker should face a criminal investigation on suspicion of justifying terrorism after she described Palestinian militant group Hamas as a "resistance" movement.

The comments by lawmaker Daniele Obono of the France Unbowed (LFI) party come as the party and its figurehead and ex-presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon are coming under increasing pressure even within the left over their stance on the attack by Hamas on Israel.

"Hamas, a resistance movement? No! This is a terrorist movement," Darmanin wrote on X (the site formerly known as Twitter), saying he was requesting prosecutors open a probe into justifying "terrorism".

Obono is close to Melenchon who has stood in the last three presidential elections and played a major role in the past two campaigns that were ultimately won by President Emmanuel Macron.

Asked repeatedly on Sud Radio if Hamas was "a resistance movement", Obono replied: "yes."
 
"It's an Islamist political movement that has an armed wing... It's a resistance movement that defines itself as such," added the lawmaker, a member of parliament since 2017.

Her comments immediately stirred controversy, forcing Obono to take to social media to denounce "manipulations."

"I said that Hamas was an Islamist political group that claims to be part of the resistance to the occupation of Palestine," she said on X. 

"This is a fact," she said, adding that her comments were "neither an excuse nor support" for "despicable war crimes against Israeli civilians."

French Transport Minister Clement Beaune described her comments as "disgusting".

"She takes a new step in shame. By defending terrorism and anti-Semitism, by violating the law of the Republic," he wrote on X.
At least 20 French citizens were confirmed to have been killed in the October 7 attack.

The refusal of Melenchon and the LFI to describe Hamas as a terror group has caused a crisis within the NUPES coalition of France's left which also brings together Socialists, Greens and Communists.

Socialist leader Olivier Faure told France Inter radio that he was suggesting a "moratorium" on his MPs taking part in NUPES, saying there was a problem with the "Melenchon method" and he can "no longer claim to embody all the Greens and left".

Melenchon hit back by writing on X that Faure was "breaking up NUPES".