On the 92nd day of the war, pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the UK took to the streets to protest against Israel’s actions against the Palestinian civilians and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Demonstrators gathered in various cities including Birmingham, Bristol, Brighton, Canterbury, Oxford, and Hastings. In London, marches are planned in neighbourhoods including Camden, Hackney, Harrow, and Ealing.
The large-scale demonstrations are aimed at calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Protesters chanted anti-Israel slogans and carried Palestinian flags and signs, with some reading “Stop bombing Gaza,” “You should be ashamed,” “From river to sea Palestine will be free,” “Freedom for Palestine,” “End Genocide,” and “Cease-fire now.”
With Israel’s catastrophic onslaught ongoing, we must continue to take action to demand a cease-fire now, and an end to British complicity in Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign said in a statement.
Addressing demonstrators in Camden, Sabby Sagall, president of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Camden, said that Israel has stepped up its attacks on Gaza, but also recalled Israel’s history of ethnic cleansing since 1947.
He also praised the International Criminal Court’s application against Israel filed by South Africa and called it the most positive step taken in the process. Sagall, expressing support for the Palestinian people as a Jew, said Israel has been terrorising Palestinians for 75 years.
Andrew Murray, deputy president of the Stop the War Coalition, emphasised the need to end political support in the UK for Israeli “genocide” in Gaza:
The British and the American governments are ignoring the genocide. Our government is arming the genocide, it is politically supporting and diplomatically covering up genocide.
The comments also came from people who are not directly involved in the conflict. For example, retired physician Jonathan Flaxman, who is also Jewish, spoke about the health care situation in Gaza and Palestine: hospitals are deliberately attacked under the pretext of targeting Hamas leaders, leading to premeditated attacks on health care workers, and more than 300 of them have been killed.
There’s no functioning health service in northern Gaza. Twenty-three out of 36 hospitals have been destroyed. And by destroying the hospitals, people who are injured, who couldn’t be saved, will die slow, painful death. We know that it’s part of the ethnic cleansing.
The protest in Camden included a rally outside Labour leader Keir Starmer’s office. Campaigners have criticised Starmer for what they see as his failure to advocate a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip despite the rising death toll.
Dissatisfaction with Starmer’s policies has grown to the point where the group Organise Corbyn Inspired Socialist Alliance has begun work to run an independent candidate against Starmer in the next election to oust the Labour Party leader: “I am outraged that Keir Starmer hasn’t been called for a cease-fire. There are beautiful children in Gaza right now being murdered, being slaughtered, being traumatized. And Starmer hasn’t voted for a cease-fire and we are outraged and we are campaigning to unseat him in his constituency,” according to an alliance volunteer.
A total of 26,000 votes are needed to elect a new MP to replace Starmer.
Earlier, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to prevent further Israeli attacks in Gaza as over 22,000 people killed and 58,000 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.
