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French press review 12 November 2014

Could the African Nations Cup be played outside Africa. Did Fillon discuss politics with an Elysée bureaucrat? Will Rosetta meet 67P? Can the Oslo accords still help the Middle East?

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According to the front page of this morning’s French sports daily paper L’Equipe, there’s a possibility that the 2015 African Nations Cup football competition won’t be played in Africa.

With questionable regard for the families of those who have lost relatives to the Ebola epidemic currently ravaging parts of west and central Africa, L’Equipe’s main headline reads “The African Cup falls victim to Ebola”.

Morocco was supposed to host the competition but asked for a postponement because of the Ebola crisis. When that was refused, Morocco decided to withdraw as host nation.

So that leaves the Confederation of African Football looking for somewhere to play ball. South Africa and Ghana have both refused. Nigeria is willing but may not excite too much enthusiasm because of the Boko Haram terror threat. Egypt and Sudan are also in the running, despite their own political and security problems. Gabon may not have adequate facilities.

And that leads, logically enough, to Qatar, the Persian Gulf state controversially due to host football’s World Cup in 2022 and already a big spender in Africa. The other possible host nation outside Africa is only slightly less surprising . . .  they’re talking about Brazil!

In either case, don’t expect too many local supporters to show up.

The good news is that the storm in the goldfish bowl appears to be blowing itself out.

Centrist Le Monde is the only paper to continue to give pride of place to the political ping-pong match between former prime minister François Fillon and top presidential advisor Jean-Pierre Jouyet over allegations that Fillon tried to get the Hollande administration to turn up the judicial heat on former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Le Monde is clearly proud of its scoop but this morning’s headline is a bit of a damp squib: the affair, we are told, is causing waves in the right-wing UMP household and in the Elysée Palace, which is where the left-wing president dries his socks.

You’ll know that this whole sorry business is based on Jouyet’s recollection of a lunch last summer with Fillon and a chap with the unforgettable name of Antoine Gosset-Grainville.

Now Antoine has broken his silence to say that national politics were never discussed as the lads chewed their fish and chips, nor was there any mention of the internal affairs of the conservative UMP party of which Fillon is currently a copresident.

Monsieur Gosset-Grainville is categorical.

"At no point,” he says, “did François Fillon ask for the slightest intervention by Jean-Pierre Jouyet on any political subject.” Ouch!

Maybe Monsieur Jouyet should start looking for a new day job?

Apart from that, the front pages show a remarkable contrast, with Libération and Le Figaro giving the honours to the space probe, Rosetta, now 10 years and 500 million kilometres from Earth and due to try later today to land a robot craft on a comet. The robot is called Philae and the comet goes by the name of Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 67P for short!

Tragically, and much closer to home, L’Humanité looks to the Middle East, where tensions between Arabs and Israelis are now at their highest since the end of the second Palestinian uprising in 2005.

The communist paper says that the Palestinians have been pushed beyond all reasonable limits by Jewish colonisation of the Occupied Territories.

Le Figaro's front-page editorial warns that the situation is dangerously explosive at a regional level, especially since there's a possibility that the murderous morons behind the Islamic State armed group may see a chance to enlarge their wished-for caliphate by aligning themselves with Palestinian discontent.

To avoid a cataclysm, writes Le Figaro, Israel must finally accept the terms of the Oslo Accords, even if colonisation in defiance of that peace deal has since substantially reduced the area supposed to be given back to the Palestinians.

One terrible irony of the current situation, says Le Figaro, is that young Palestinians see Israel not just as an enemy and occupying force but also, in the violence and disproportion of its acts, as a role model.

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