MORE than half a million workers, students and youth held a powerful march for Palestine in central London on Saturday, marking two years of Israeli genocide, and celebrating the ceasefire that has been forced on the Israeli Zionist regime.
‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!’ rang out from marchers the length and breadth of the march as it assembled on Victoria Embankment with their Palestine flags, trade union banners and home-made placards.
The loud and lively contingent behind the Workers Revolutionary Party and Young Socialists, banner kept up constant charts of ‘1234 Occupation no more! 5678 Israel is a terror state!’ General strike for Palestine! Kick Starmer out!’
A large banner demanding: ‘Police must arrest those who call for Global Intifada,’ draped by a gang of Zionists on the bridge above the front of the march, was quickly torn down by marchers to huge cheers from below.
As the march was assembling, university lecturer in maths and engineering Amna Musa from Skipton in Yorkshire, told News Line: ‘I’m doing as much as I can. The British nation must wake up to this historical injustice. The Balfour Declaration was the beginning. The real people of this land were kicked out.
‘In Skipton, I’ve organised with a group of friends in Come Dine with Palestine evenings and we’ve raised £14,000 for Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Amos Trust, which is a joint Palestinian and Jewish group which takes aid into the West Bank.
Teachers and National Education Union members. James and Lucy Parminter, from Cambridge, said: ‘We have to be here for Palestine, especially today. This ceasefire shows Netanyahu has lost. Britain must stop arming Israel today. The NEU must assert its policy. Stop Britain arming Israel, now!’
Keith Porter from Maidstone in Kent, said: ‘The trade union movement has got to stand up and fight for Palestine now. The Israelis are in league with arms suppliers and all sorts of people who love war. Blair is involved as well. The trade union leaders who support the arms suppliers must be kicked out of the unions now.’
Cristy Quintana, who came with two friends from Purley in Surrey, said: ‘I’m calling for the government to end collaboration with Israel in all aspects – military, economic, cultural. Because Israel has no place in the world, the way they are.
‘When Israel learns to live with its neighbours, they can live in the world. But only when they learn to live in peace. Until then, we have to keep pressuring to achieve this, with marches, students, trade union action and boycotts.’
Arthur Shaw, an RMT member from Birkenhead, said: ‘The genocide must stop. It’s crazy, two years of slaughter. Our country and the west are complicit. It seems that Starmer wants a war economy. He’s investing so much in the arms companies. He supports Zelensky, who has an army full of fascists. I’d like a general strike to stop the genocide and it will get rid of Starmer at the same time.’
Tilly Anne from Melbourne, Australia, said: ‘The UK must stop arming Israel. Spotify, which is based in America and has bases in Australia and Britain, is funding the IDF and arms construction. It also, underpays artists and uses the money to pay for war. I’m a singer/songwriter and I support Palestine strongly. I played in a fundraiser for Palestine recently.’
Three hours after the march set off, those at the rally in Whitehall at the end of the march, were told that the back of the march had still not left Embankment and the estimated numbers taking part had been updated to 600,000.
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‘We couldn’t believe the destruction we have seen in Gaza City’
‘WE couldn’t believe the destruction we have seen,’ Rami Mohammad Ali, 37, said after walking 15km (9.3 miles) with his son from Deir el-Balah to Gaza City.
‘We are joyful to return to Gaza City, but at the same time we have bitter feelings about the destruction,’ he said, describing seeing human remains scattered along roads.
Families continued to move north towards Gaza City, returning to what was the centre of their lives.
What they are finding is widespread devastation, entire neighbourhoods levelled and living conditions transformed beyond recognition.
The landscape is marked by vast craters and the remains of destroyed buildings, with civilian infrastructure, particularly in major urban areas where Israeli forces operated during previous ground offensives, utterly dismantled.
The scale of destruction is unprecedented and what has been most distressing, residents say, is the large number of bodies being recovered from the ruins of those areas.
Rescue workers in northern Gaza warned there could be unexploded ordnance and bombs that might pose a risk.
Amjad Shawa, who heads a Palestinian organisation coordinating with aid groups, estimated 300,000 tents are needed to temporarily house 1.5 million displaced Palestinians.
- Israeli forces detained several Palestinian farmers and prevented them from harvesting olives on their land in the town of Tarqumiyah, west of Hebron in the occupied West Bank yesterday.
The arrests came as the national olive harvest campaign began in the Hebron governorate, launched in support of farmers facing repeated attacks by Israeli forces and settlers.
Witnesses said the soldiers stopped farmers from reaching their land near the bypass road and the illegal settlements of Adora and Telem, their vehicles were seized, and they were warned not to return.
Israeli forces also raided several homes belonging to Palestinian prisoners expected to be released under the ceasefire’s captive-prisoner exchange.
In Nablus, military vehicles stormed multiple neighbourhoods and refugee camps, including Balata and Askar al-Jadid, as well as the nearby towns of Salem, Aqraba and Zeita Jamma’in.