FOR the first time in 15 months, people in Gaza are free of the sound of drone buzz. Israeli tanks have withdrawn, and the jets, for now, have stopped bombing.
As people go back to their communities, their homes are destroyed. Under the 40 million tonnes of rubble, the Gazan Civil Defence estimates there are the bodies and bones of 10,000 people.
The basic infrastructure we take for granted – health systems, energy, sewage works, schools – has been obliterated. Gaza, to all intents and purposes, is uninhabitable. Despite this, Gazans are determined to rebuild their lives. Of course, it is a fragile arrangement, which could break down at any stage.
So far, the first three Israeli hostages have been released, as have 90 Palestinians: 69 women and 21 teenage boys – some as young as 12. Six hundred truckloads of aid are expected to cross into Gaza each day, having been prevented from doing so by the Israeli state, which employed starvation as a weapon of war.
As well as decomposed corpses, the landscape is littered with unexploded ordinance. In Rafah, at the time of writing, one person had been killed and three wounded as a result of objects left behind by the IDF.
While the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes, and the world’s leading human rights organisations – Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – have concluded the events in Gaza are genocidal in nature, more is going to come to light as the full scale of the horror emerges.
There will be a combination of rewriting history and denial. But there is no doubt about the role of the UK Government in relation to providing technical support, arms and political cover.
There must be accountability, as justice demands, but also a clear message to all states that the behaviour exhibited in Gaza can never be justified or tolerated.
Enter the mass movement which has emerged for Palestine. Defamed and smeared from the outset, the demonstrations have held their ground. Week after week, people took to the streets across the UK.
In London, hundreds of thousands of people took part in more than 20 national marches. This represents a rate and scale of popular mobilisation unseen since the Chartists.
With a hostile media and political class ranged against it, this campaign has been a thorn in the side of the British establishment. Suella Braverman, who infamously labelled the protesters as “hate marchers”, tried to ban them. Despite the onslaught, the movement continued, retained its principles and organised the broadest possible cross-section of society onto the streets.
FOR 22 of these demonstrations, the organisers have been determined in asserting their right to assemble. Each and every gathering has taken place peacefully and passed without so much as a litter offence.
Then, a marked change in policy. Despite the logistics for the twenty-third march – which took place on Saturday – having been confirmed with the police nearly two months in advance, the Met suddenly reneged on the agreement and stated its intention to prevent the protest from assembling at the BBC as planned.
Organisers had been seeking to highlight the inconsistencies in the broadcaster’s coverage, as recently documented by fellow National contributor Owen Jones. The excuse offered by the police was that the march could cause disruption to a synagogue which was not part of the march route. The police themselves have said on the record that no march has ever caused any issue in this regard. Accusing anyone with seeking to do so, is needless to say, utterly contemptible.
The protests are composed of all faiths and none, including Jewish organisations and have passed without incident. Indeed, 13 Holocaust survivors, and survivor descendants, wrote an open letter in the Guardian opposing the ban.
Another letter calling on the police to drop their objections was signed by dozens of MPs, NGOs, union leaders, lawyers, celebrities – and even baronesses and lords.
As an alternative, the organisers called a rally at Whitehall instead and announced from the stage that, as an act of protest against
the police ban, a delegation of organisers and rally speakers – including an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, politician and prominent cultural figures – would walk peacefully towards the BBC.
It was clearly stated that the delegation expected to be stopped by the police and that no attempt would be made to push through police lines. The delegation would simply leave the flowers they were carrying at the feet of the police and disperse in an orderly and dignified manner. Regardless, a major and calculated escalation would ensue. After directing the delegation to filter through to Trafalgar Square, the police violently arrested Chris Nineham, a founding member of the Stop the War Coalition and chief steward on well-facilitated anti-war demonstrations in London for more than 25 years.
INDEED, he has given evidence in Parliament on the topic. Nineham was detained in custody overnight and charged. Ben Jamal, director of the
well-established Palestine Solidarity Campaign has also been charged with public order offences.
In addition, and quite incredibly, the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn MP and former shadow chancellor, John McDonnell MP, were called in to be interviewed by police under criminal caution the following day. At least 70 others were arrested. This, evidently, could not be more stark.
A nakedly political decision was made to repress and intimidate key organisers and spokespeople in an attempt demobilise and decapitate the Palestine solidarity demonstrations.
While the brazen nature of this turn of events should send a chill up the spine of any right-thinking democrat, the rationale is not complicated to decipher. The last thing those complicit in the atrocities in Gaza want is an ongoing campaign to hold them to account.
And certainly not one which can turn out mass mobilisations every other week. This must be quashed, marginalised and consigned to the fringes as the reality of the crimes are neatly memory-holed.
The whole matter is to be swept under the carpet, and that means putting the movement back in its box. Now, this is a question of pushing back against authoritarianism and defending rights that are hard-won but easily lost without a vigilant and engaged citizenry.
The demonisation and suppression of Palestine solidarity may be the sharp end of the wedge, but the democratic rights of all are threatened unless its right to protest is defended.
