Tens of thousands to march in London against Israel’s genocide in Gaza on Balfour Day, the annual commemoration of Britain’s role in dispossessing Palestinians of their homeland in 1948
- 21st major demonstration for Palestine since October 2023 takes place on Saturday 2nd November in London
- Route goes from Whitehall, where a mass “die in” will be held outside Downing Street at midday before the march, and culminate in a rally near the US Embassy in Nine Elms
- Situation in Gaza is worsening daily, with indiscriminate Israeli bombardment, leading the UN Secretary General to say that everyone in the North of Gaza is at risk of losing their life.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators will march through London on Saturday to highlight their anger and frustration with the UK government’s continuing refusal to take meaningful action to halt Israel’s genocide in Gaza and America’s active support for it. This week Foreign Secretary David Lammy MP was widely condemned for remarks in the Commons in which he suggested Israel’s actions in Gaza do not amount to genocide on the grounds that not enough Palestinians have yet been killed to justify that. He showed a complete misunderstanding of the Genocide Convention, in which the definition rests upon intent to destroy a human group in whole or in part, not numbers killed; a disregard for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that it is a plausible case of genocide; and also went against his own remarks in 2017 when he described the slaughter of the Rohingya people as a genocide after 20 000 deaths. More than 42 000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and many thousands more are missing, presumed dead. Hundreds of public figures have called on Lammy to apologise and withdraw his remarks, but he was followed by his leader Keir Starmer who also refused to call Israel’s actions a genocide during PMQs on Wednesday.
The UK government’s linguistic manoeuvres betray an unwillingness to confront the realities and implications of Israel’s genocide, which entail a legal as well as a moral duty to end all support for Israel and ensure there is no UK complicity in the genocide. In September David Lammy accepted that there is a clear risk that UK arms exports to Israel might be used to commit serious violations of international law, but his inadequate response was to suspend only 30 out of 350 arms export licenses. In particular, he excluded indirect exports of components to Israel for the F-35 combat aircraft, known to have been used to massacre civilians in Gaza. The UK remains deeply implicated in Israel’s crimes against humanity, as does America which provides the majority of Israel’s military supplies.
The UK government’s responsibility for events in Palestine are not confined to this present period, however. On November 2nd 1917, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour made his infamous declaration that the British government supported “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. Made without thought for or consultation with the indigenous population, the Balfour Declaration created the conditions for the subsequent Nakba in 1948 in which 750 000 Palestinians were expelled and 500 towns and villages destroyed in the creation of the state of Israel. It was founded as an ethno-nationalist state in which one group – Israeli Jews – have supremacy over another – Palestinians – and has operated on those lines ever since. In Gaza and the West Bank we now see where, more than 100 years later, such notions of ethnic supremacy lead.
The situation in Gaza is grave and worsening. On Monday the Israeli Knesset voted to ban the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in the occupied Palestinian territories, a move which contradicts the principles of the UN Charter and violates Israel’s obligations under international law. The head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini said the move will only “increase the suffering of the Palestinians and are nothing less than collective punishment.” Israel has imposed a total siege on the north of Gaza, with indiscriminate bombing of the trapped population resulting in daily massacres. The last remaining hospital has been attacked repeatedly and left without supplies, whilst insufficient food aid allowed by Israel are driving Palestinians towards starvation.
Ben Jamal, PSC Director, said :
“The anniversary of the Balfour declaration, the notorious document which laid the foundations for the dispossession of the Palestinian people, reminds us of the depths and length of British complicity with these rights violations. Every Palestinian knows who Balfour was and every Palestinian knows of the guilt of Keir Starmer’s Government in aiding and abetting the current genocide against them. Their demand is the same as it has been since 1921 when a delegation of Palestinians including Shibli Jamal, my Great Uncle, came to London asking for the declaration to be overturned: End your complicity- support us in realising the rights that you enjoy and that you have helped deny to us for over 100 years. Stop doing us harm.”