The following article is a comment piece from Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its partner organisations.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators will gather in London on Saturday as they have done throughout the 15 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This will be the eve of the ceasefire that Palestinians and their supporters around the world have desperately sought as Israel carried out a barbaric assault on Gaza with catastrophic results. Ending the bombing is only the start. Israel’s siege on Gaza must be lifted immediately to enable the flow of vital humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies.
The ceasefire must be permanent.
The genocidal onslaught in Gaza is rooted in decades of oppression – ethnic cleansing, settler-colonisation, military occupation and apartheid against the Palestinian people between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean sea. It has been enabled by decades of support for Israel from UK governments, corporations and institutions. For all these reasons and more, we will continue our campaigns and demonstrations such as that tomorrow in London.
Palestine: we will still march
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and its Coalition partners have organised 22 major demonstrations since October 2023, working with the police authorities. The marches have been overwhelmingly peaceful and well-ordered as the police themselves have accepted. However, this protest has suffered from heavy handed police obstruction using powers under the Public Order Act that erode our democratic rights.
The Met Police originally agreed the route of the march, BBC Portland Place to Whitehall, in November 2024, but have this month reneged on their undertaking on the grounds that it would cause disruption to a synagogue which is not on the route of the march and despite the fact that there has not been a single documented case of threat or incident at a synagogue in relation to the national Palestine marches that have taken place over the last 15 months.
The Met Police
Hundreds of political, social and cultural figures have voiced their support for the right to demonstrate in support of Palestine after substantial evidence emerged that the BBC is failing to uphold its own editorial guidelines in the reporting of Israel’s actions – including MPs, trade unions leaders, civil society leaders, actors, musicians and artists. A letter organised by the Jewish bloc which attends in support of every Palestine March has attracted more than 900 signatures by members of the Jewish community calling on the Met to reverse its ban. A group of Holocaust survivors and their descendants have also written a public letter in support of a march.
Over the past week the Met Police have imposed a series of repressive conditions to prevent us marching and have even attempted to impose a route that the Board of Deputies announced they had suggested to the police. This has been firmly rejected by the Palestine Coalition – it is an affront that pro-Israel groups can attempt to decide where we can or cannot march.
Despite intensive efforts to reach a compromise with the Met, it has so far refused to accept or offer a reasonable solution. However, we will assemble on Whitehall on Saturday at noon. We reiterate our call on the police to lift their repressive conditions and allow us to march. If they continue to refuse to do so and prevent us from marching, we will be rallying in Whitehall to protest.
Israel’s genocide isn’t over
Ben Jamal, PSC Director, said :
Israel’s genocide has not ended. Even now, while we await a ceasefire, Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza are dying from bombardment, and suffering from lack of medical care, food and shelter. We demand a permanent ceasefire, an end to the siege of Gaza and the immediate provision of massive humanitarian aid.
It is absolutely legitimate and necessary for us in the UK to be holding our government to account for it’s military, diplomatic and economic support of Israel, which continues to be investigated by the world courts for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But this protest has been marred by political policing which is an attack on our fundamental democratic rights. The Met has seemingly accepted and acted upon the arguments of pro-Israel groups that seek to delegitimise our protest as antisemitic or a threat to Jewish people. This is a gross distortion of the truth. There is not a single instance of our marches posing any threat to synagogues or Jewish individuals. Indeed, we count a large, self-organised Jewish bloc as some of our most indefatigable supporters.
The Met’s approach has been confrontational, heavy-handed and intransigent. Their use of powers under the Public Order Act has been based on flimsy grounds and arbitrarily applied, which erodes the right of peaceful protest that is fundamental in a democracy. Despite this, our protest tomorrow will go ahead – we call on all those who seek justice for Palestine to stand with us.
Featured image via the Canary
