French press review 19 March 2015

Given this morning's top story, it is perhaps unsurprising that there is one story dominating the French papers this morning, that of the attacks in Tunisia.

Left wing Libération says that Tunisia has been held hostage... whilst both right-wing Le Figaro and Catholic La Croix dailies remark that it is the country's turn to be hit. Communist L'Humanité headlines that Jihadist killers have attacked the Jasmine revolution.

Most of the papers have dramatic photographs of that attack in the capital, Tunis, at the Bardo museum which claimed the lives of 19 people and two of the gunmen. L'Humanité shows scared people being ushered past SWAT teams, in the centre foreground of the photo is a traffic sign saying Stop!

Le Figaro dedicates its front page editorial to reflecting on the consequences of this attack. The paper points out that the jihadists don't choose their targets randomly and that this particular attack had not only Tunisians and foreigners in the cross-hairs, but also culture, democracy, economics and peace, as those attackers first targeted the national parliament before opening fire on the museum.

Tunisia, argues the daily, is one of the few countries to have established a secular, democratic model of politics since the start of the Arab spring uprisings. Indeed, parliamentarians were debating a new anti-terrorist law when the attacks took place.

But, on the flipside of the positive steps Tunisia has made in politics, three thousand Tunisians are thought to have joined islamist armed groups in Iraq and Syria, about 500 are now back in Tunisia.

All of this leads Le Figaro to conclude that, more than ever, the international community needs to support Tunisia's political model of tolerance and peace because Tunisia is still but a hop, skip and a jump from becoming a pariah state, despite its admirable progress.

The other major story in the French papers is the election in Israel where incumbent prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's party has won the highest number of seats. Le Monde's editorial is entitled "Bibi, king of Israel - alas!" Bibi being Netanyahu's nickname. His Likud party won 30 of the 120 parliamentary seats and so will now set about establishing a coalition - most probably with nationalist and religious parties.

The fact that Bibi's party came out top is not good news, centristLe Monde argues. Whilst Netanyahu has sometimes cultivated an image as a man of the centre, he is actually to the far right says the paper.

"With absolute cyncism", opines Le Monde, "he ruled out the creation of a Palestinan state, back-tracking on his previous stance." The paper also notes that Netanyahu said that he would continue the policy of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and that Netanyahu "alleged that his condemnation of the nuclear negotiations with Iran had led to a western plot against him, particularly from English-speaking countries."

Whilst the Labour party in the country focused on the economy in the run-up to the elections, Netanyahu focused on security: the nearby wars, the emergence of Islamic State and the rising power of Iran and Hizbollah in Lebanon, says the paper, concluding that in today's Middle East, the pessimists win the day.

La Croix focuses on the Palestinian question in its editorial and is mildly more optimistic. It points out that Netanyahu has not presented an alternative to the two-state solution and much will depend on the coalition that he forms.

The Catholic daily concludes that one day, Israel is going to have to negotiate on the Palestinian question.