Three police officers were injured on Tuesday night near the British Parliament during clashes with what have been described as “violent pro-Palestine mobs.” One Metropolitan Police officer has been left with a serious facial injury after she was hit by a bottle lobbed from the crowd.
The violence came as protesters in both Paris and Bologna also caused disruption, blocking roads and scaling historic monuments while shouting “Israel get out of the way, Palestine is not yours.”
Close to 10,000 activists are reported to have descended on Westminster on Tuesday to protest against Israel’s continued response to the October 7th Hamas terror attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described a strike which killed dozens of displaced Palestinians in Rafah over the weekend as a “tragic mishap,” but said that “every precaution possible” was being taken to protect civilians, adding: “If we give in, the massacre will return. If we give in, we will give a huge win to terror.”
The protest, partly organised by the Palestine Solidarity Group, was supposed to end at 8 p.m., but around 500 activists broke the police curfew. Forty were arrested two hours after the official action broke up—including one of the protest leaders—for offences including obstruction of a highway and assaults of emergency workers.
The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that “specialist arrest teams in protective equipment” were required to stop the breakaway protests, and that they had finally resolved the situation by 2 a.m.—six hours after the demonstration should have come to a halt.
Earlier in the week, several dozen Gaza activists occupied and barricaded themselves within a historic Manchester university building, disrupting the end-of-year exams of “hundreds” of students. The action was merely a continuation of mass disruption to universities across the country—and, again, across Europe.
Officials have warned of investigations being launched and of repercussions for those causing mass disruption, but after months of protests, none of this shows any signs of abating.
Signs at yesterday’s rally called for a “ceasefire now,” which Israel fears would hand Hamas time to regroup ahead of a further assault, and said Netanyahu was guilty of committing “genocide.”
