600,000 WORKERS AND YOUTH marched from Central London to Whitehall on Saturday in a massive show of strength and solidarity with the masses of Palestine, while at the same time many of them demanded the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Starmer government and bring in a Workers Government and Socialism.
The capitalist press has reported that there has been a massive return by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to the homes that they were driven out of.
Along the road stretching from the south to the north of the Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of citizens line up in an unforgettable scene for the second time in a year.
Men, women, and children walk with dust-laden steps but eyes filled with hope. This is no ordinary return, it is a clear declaration that the project of extermination and displacement has failed before the people’s determination to remain.
As soon as the genocide war was declared over, ululations erupted from the displacement camps in the south. Young men waved flags and chanted loudly, while children ran and danced with joy.
Amid these scenes, Umm Mahmoud Mehanna, 45, displaced in Deir al-Balah and preparing to return to Gaza City’s al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, said: ‘There’s nothing in this world that can replace our home. Even if it’s destroyed, we’ll go back, spread out the stones, and sleep on them. We’re tired of displacement, but every time we return to our land, it gives us new life.’
From Khan Younis to Gaza, Convoys of Return stretch along the coastal road. People walk for tens of kilometres, carrying what remains of their belongings on small carts, baby strollers, or on their weary shoulders.
Standing on the ruins of her house in al-Shati Camp, after walking there from the southern Gaza Strip, Layan Miqdad, 33, burst into tears as she retraced al-Rashid Street on foot. She had been forced to flee a month earlier under Israeli bombardment and mass displacement when the military assault on the city began.
‘They told us to go to Egypt, to the south, anywhere, but we don’t want anywhere else but Gaza. Maybe there are no homes left, but the meaning of life is still here. Staying is our only answer to every attempt at erasure and expulsion,’ Layan said.
This refusal is not a passing feeling, it is an act of collective resistance. Every person who returned to a destroyed home is helping write a new chapter of Palestinian steadfastness, proving that forced displacement will never become a permanent reality.
In Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood, the shattered buildings seem to tell a story of pain. Yet among the rubble, astonishing scenes emerge: Children drawing on broken walls, women cleaning in front of destroyed homes, and men preparing shelters and tents.
They have just returned from the south, walking back on foot carrying their burdens but also their will to live, despite the arrogance of occupation.
On Friday afternoon, the ceasefire officially took effect, marking the end of a two-year genocide war. Within moments, Gaza’s al-Rashid Street was packed with thousands of citizens heading back to their neighbourhoods and villages in the north.
These scenes of return are not only human they are profoundly political and moral. They mark a practical end to the project of uprooting Palestinians from their land and affirm that existence here is, in itself, an act of defiance.
In a moment, the occupier intended as an ending, the people chose to make it a new beginning.
‘Those who survived the bombing came back to live again. And we say to the whole world: We are staying,’ said a young man returning from Mawasi Khan Younis to Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, carrying what little he has left.
Halfway along the road, Abu Rami Yaghi, 52, dragging a torn suitcase beside two children, said: ‘It doesn’t matter how tired we are … what matters is that we’re going back. We measured the distance in steps of longing. Even if the house has turned to dust, that dust is ours, it belongs to no one else.’
A firm rejection of displacement.
The 600,000 strong march by workers and youth on Saturday in London gave the Palestinian revolution its 100% support. The TUC must now intervene and call a general strike to demand that the masses of Palestine be returned to their homes and take back control of their country.
