The Paris police made the announcement in a statement on Friday, saying tomorrow’s planned anti-Israeli protest would be banned.

French President Francois Hollande said during a visit to Niger that he backed the protest ban.

This is while French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he welcomed the Paris police's move and advised other cities across France to consider banning planned protest rallies.

Protest organizers said they would appeal against the police's decision, arguing that the ban was a breach of the “basic right” to demonstrate.

Organizers further stated that despite the ban, they would go ahead with the protest rally, which is planned to be held in the northern Paris neighborhood of Barbés.

“In light of the escalation" of Israeli attacks on "Gaza, there is great anger,” said Alain Pojolat, a protest co-organizer, adding, "Hundreds of thousands of young people will go to Barbés on Saturday whether the demonstration is authorized or not.”

A pro-Palestinian protest in Paris on July 13 ended in violent clashes, prompted by attacks from the radical pro-Israeli group known as the Jewish Defense League on some of the protesters.

The Zionist group, which is most active in the US and Western Europe, is fiercely anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim and has engaged in several terror attacks against Arab and Palestinian activists and university professors living in the West.

The ban comes as anti-Israeli rallies are being held worldwide in condemnation of Tel Aviv’s ongoing atrocities against Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave.

On Thursday, thousands of Israeli troops launched a ground invasion of Gaza after days of air and sea-based strikes on Gaza.

The occupying regime began its latest onslaught on Palestinians in the impoverished Gaza Strip on July 8. So far, nearly 300 people have been killed. About a third of the fatalities have been women and children.

NTJ/MB