Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters gathered in Parliament Square, London, on Saturday to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The protesters marched from Bank Junction to Westminster, with many holding signs with the words “Free Palestine” and “End the siege”.
Police said that one woman was arrested after the force’s specialist Voyager CCTV monitoring team identified her as being wanted for an offence that occurred at a previous protest on 28 October.
On Friday the UK abstained on a UN security council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, a motion that was vetoed by the US.
“We were oppressed by white people, as black South Africans we had to fight for our freedoms, we are still not entirely free,” she said.
Previous weekends have seen thousands of protesters and counter-protesters converging on the capital.
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Why are the people calling for a ceasefire always calling on only Israel to cease? Hamas has continued fighting, killing, and bombing Israel as well. They are the ones who ended the ceasefire by refusing to continue releasing hostages (including babies) and launching multiple attacks.
Everyone wants this war to end. Hamas could surrender and release the hostages and there'd be peace tomorrow. Instead Hamas has determined to fight to the last one remains alive.
I get that they view Israel as "theirs" (from the river to the sea means all of Israel and Palestine). But do they really think Israel will just be gone one day?
Israel doesn't have to be gone in order for Palestinians to be free. People are protesting because this isn't a war, this is resistance fighters standing up against an occupation and apartheid system. A free Palestine does not mean Israel and Zionists wiped off the map. It means Palestinians living with dignity, human rights, and self determination; things they are not given now, and have not been given for 75 years.
Yes, there are those in the fringe that believe Israel needs to be wiped off the map. Any political situation will breed extremists. But in order for peace to be achieved, first and foremost is the dismantling of Israel's APARTHEID SYSTEM.
this is why we rally. Our governments must understand that we are tasking them with putting pressure on Israel to change its ways. This is how apartheid fell in South Africa.
Free Palestine.
Salam and shalom to all citizens of Palestine.
Edit: forgot to add: those extremists do not represent the movement as a whole
Thousands of Palestinians held without trial for years.
Tens of thousands dead Palestinians, most of which children.
Many more displaced, being pushed out of Gaza to be refugees.
For months, they have been denied food, water, electricity, and Internet.
Meanwhile,
Israel uses AI to find 100s if targets daily, using drones and aircrafts. No boots on the ground. Billions in international aid. The people living life largely uninterrupted. Settlers getting more and more "free" land.
Can you piece together why the focus is on Israel?
Israel has been in violation of the GCIV since 2007, it's been a globally recognized humanitarian crisis, and an extremely successful genocide/ethnic cleansing.
Israel has killed over 10x as many Palestinians compared to all pro-Palestinian groups combined (not just Hamas) since the year 2000. Since (and including) October 7th, Israel has killed 18,000 people (8000 children) Palestinians. Hamas has killed around 1200 people.
Maybe you think, like the Israeli defense minister that the killing of thousands of innocent children is justified because we're dealing with "human animals". The goal being to objectify Palestinians the same way we objectify non-human animals, so they can be slaughtered just as ruthlessly and effectively.
The formation of the genocidal state of Israel, which happened so recently that our current president was alive, involved the forceful removal and ethnic cleansing of almost a million native Palestinians.
We're far enough removed from the ethnic cleansing of native Americans in the U.S that most people recognize it was wrong for Europeans to invade, colonize, and genocide the native population, but when we see the exact same thing happening in our lifetimes, people like yourself happily back settler colonialism. It's genuinely fucking astounding.