Major museums and cultural venues across France, including the Louvre, closed on Saturday as a new round of nationwide protests drew an estimated 410,000 people onto the streets, with the government deploying 70,000 police and gendarmes in response.
The French Ministry of Culture announced ahead of the demonstrations that leading Paris institutions, among them the Louvre Museum, the Musee d'Orsay, the Orangerie Museum, the Grand Palais and the Picasso Museum, would remain closed for safety reasons. Several said visitors who had booked tickets through official channels would receive automatic refunds.
The closures extended well beyond the ministry's initial list. The Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau confirmed that the Petit Palais, the Maison de Victor Hugo and Sainte-Chapelle also shut for the day, while outside the capital, Marseille's Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations and Lyon's Musee des Confluences followed suit.
Performance venues were similarly affected, with the Opera national de Paris confirming the closure of both the Palais Garnier and the Opera Bastille in response to the day's demonstrations. A number of other performances, exhibitions and cultural events across the capital were also canceled or rescheduled.
Banks, luxury boutiques and food shops near the Louvre and the Palais Garnier boarded up their windows and doors ahead of anticipated unrest.
The strain on France's cultural sector has spread from venue operations to consumer spending, with many Parisian theaters reporting slower ticket sales as the risk of looting and regional curfews deters audiences.
Demonstrations were authorized in eight cities nationwide, among them Lille, Strasbourg and Marseille. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said Saturday evening that police had arrested nearly 1,000 people during the day, while the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) trade union put turnout at nearly 800,000 -- almost double the official estimate. Saturday's mobilization follows a wave of protests on Oct. 17 that drew around 550,000 people and brought 2,397 arrests amid violence, according to Interior Ministry figures.
French protests force closure of nation's premier cultural institutions
Israeli military operations have affected hundreds of Palestinian families, with more than 2,000 civilians directly impacted in Hebron region in the West Bank, the official Palestinian News and Information Agency (WAFA) reported Sunday.
WAFA said the Israeli military has continued its operations and maintained a blockade in the Hebron region since Friday, resulting in the forced demolition and destruction of numerous Palestinian civilian and commercial facilities, as well as significant property damage.
The report said that on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forcibly demolished a residential building in western Hebron, used heavy machinery to destroy several commercial facilities and leveled thousands of square meters of surrounding agricultural land.
In addition, the IDF intensively installed various military roadblocks and closed iron gates, cutting off main roads and severely disrupting local supply chains and the movement of people, it said.
On the same day, Israeli Jewish settlers also leveled land belonging to Palestinian civilians in southern Hebron and set up tents in preparation for establishing an outpost for a Jewish settlement, according to WAFA.
It said the Hebron regional government announced on Sunday that several local cities would establish joint emergency operations centers operating 24 hours a day, mobilizing all available municipal resources to assist residents affected by the Israeli military operations. Local authorities are currently expediting the drafting of a legal document to be formally submitted to the International Criminal Court.
According to WAFA, incidents of the Israeli military destroying Palestinian civilian property and attacks by Israeli Jewish settlers also occurred in other parts of the West Bank.
The Israeli army used heavy machinery to level large swaths of land and forcibly uprooted dozens of olive trees in the midst of the harvest season in a Palestinian village west of Ramallah to build a road unilaterally planned by Israel leading to a nearby Jewish settlement, it said.
In a Palestinian village near Nablus, Israeli Jewish settlers attacked and detained several Palestinian farmers harvesting olives, forcibly transferring them to a nearby Jewish settlement, according to the news outlet.
Israeli military operations impact over 2,000 people in West Bank's Hebron
