Police in Paris on Saturday fired tear gas and aimed water cannons at protesters defying a ban on marching against Israeli attacks on Gaza, dispersing demonstrators gathering in groups of several hundred, reports FRANCE 24.
Paris police said they made 44 arrests and that one officer was injured breaking up a gathering of protesters.
Between 2,500 and 3,500 protesters converged on the heavily immigrant Barbès neighbourhood in the north of Paris, according to interior ministry figures, amid a security presence of involving some 4,200 officers.
Police blocked off wide boulevards as well as narrow streets where some of the protesters were forced to retreat. Some threw stones or tried to set up roadblocks with construction barriers, but for the most part police broke up gatherings of demonstrators across the district while preventing any march toward the Place de la Bastille as planned.
Police had banned the march, and a court upheld the decision, fearing a repeat of fierce clashes that erupted during a similar Paris demonstration during the last Israel-Palestinians war in 2014, when protesters took aim at synagogues and other Israeli and Jewish targets.
"We all remember that extremely troubling protest where terrible phrases like 'death to Jews' were yelled," Mayor Anne Hidalgo told AFP on Friday, welcoming the "wise" decision by the police to ban the march.
“We don't want scenes of violence. We don't want a conflict imported to French soil,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal said
But protesters turned out anyway, waving Palestinian flags and attempting to join up with disparate groups of demonstrators.
"We refuse to silence our solidarity with the Palestinians, and we will not be prevented from demonstrating," the organisers of the Paris march – the Association of Palestinians in Ile-de-France, the wider Paris region, and other groups said in a statement.
They include anti-fascist associations, the citizens' activist group Attac and the far-left New Anti-Capitalist party.
A lawyer for the groups, Sefen Guez Guez, denounced the police ban as "disproportionate" and "politically motivated."
The police department warned on Twitter that anyone taking part would face fines of 135 euros ($165).