“The organisers say the action will symbolise the support that the majority of people in this country have for an immediate ceasefire and an end to arms sales to Israel.”
By Jennie Walsh, Stop the War
Pro-Palestine organisations are calling on supporters to join them in linking hands around the Houses of Parliament this Thursday evening (18 July), the first full day that newly elected MPs will be sitting since the general election.
Demonstrators will hold hands and spread themselves around the UK’s so-called seat of democracy in protest at the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the new Labour government’s refusal to condemn Israel’s massacre of over 90 Palestinians in a humanitarian ‘safe zone’ at the weekend – the latest in a series of massacres in the past few weeks that mark a new escalation in Israel’s assault.
The organisers say the action will symbolise the support that the majority of people in this country have for an immediate ceasefire and an end to arms sales to Israel. They are calling on MPs who support these demands to come outside and join the demonstration.
Far from condemning the slaughter of innocent men, women and children, new Labour foreign secretary David Lammy posed just hours later for photos with Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who faces an arrest warrant at the International Criminal Court.
Even more concerningly, it has also been reported that Lammy has decided not to withdraw Britain’s objection to the ICC’s application for the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant, according to an Israeli news outlet.
Newspaper Maariv said that Lammy gave assurances that the UK will maintain its objection to the application that was initially raised by the Conservative government.
As legal experts have made clear, continuing with this intervention is essentially to make the argument that Israel cannot be held to account by any international body for its actions in Gaza, no matter how monstrous
And while Lammy tweeted that he told both the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian Authority leader Mohammad Mustafa that there should be an immediate ceasefire, he has refused to threaten sanctions in order to achieve this.
The organisers of Thursday’s action at Parliament Square say that by refusing to stop sending arms to Israel, and supporting actions to hold it to account at the ICC and ICJ, the Labour government remains as complicit in the genocide as its predecessor.
- Thursday’s Hands Around Parliament starts at 6pm in Parliament Square. The organisers of the action are: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Friends of Al Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain, and Palestine Forum in Britain.
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