Aerial footage showed large crowds setting off on the march organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, with the protest due to end outside the Houses of Parliament after passing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Downing Street office.
Echoing Washington's stance, Sunak's government has stopped short of calling for a ceasefire, and instead advocated humanitarian pauses to allow aid to reach people in Gaza.
Britain has supported Israel's right to defend itself after an Oct. 7 attack by militant group Hamas that Israel said had killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
Watch: Pro-Palestine protesters call for ‘intifada from London to Gaza’
Steve Bird
Pro-Palestine protesters have chanted “from London to Gaza, we’ll have an intifada”, footage of a rally in the capital on Saturday shows.
Demonstrators following a flag that read “Fight for Revolution” were chanting the call for an intifada. The term has often been interpreted as referring to violent uprisings by Palestinians against the state of Israel.
In a clip posted on social media, a man with a loudhailer led the chant “From London to Gaza, we’ll have an intifada”.
It comes as tens of thousands of pro-Palestine protesters gathered in central London to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Organisers said they anticipated numbers exceeding last week’s demonstration, when police estimated that around 100,000 people joined, although protesters claimed the real figure was in the region of 300,000.
Police said they again anticipated about 100,000 people at the march. Similar rallies are being held in Manchester and Glasgow.
The intifada chant is a reference to two uprisings by Palestinians of both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, aimed at ending Israel’s occupation of those territories to create an independent Palestinian state.
The first intifada began in 1987 and ended six years later with a framework for peace negotiation that eventually fell through. The second took place in 2000 and is generally thought to have ended about five years later. It is estimated the two culminated in the deaths of more than 5,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis.
Protesters at the London march were also filmed chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, despite controversy around the slogan’s meaning.
No comments:
Post a Comment