Thousands of people demonstrated in Washington and London on Saturday in support of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, demanding an “immediate” ceasefire and criticizing the support given to Israel by the United States and the United Kingdom. United.
Waving Palestinian flags and many wearing the traditional keffiyeh, thousands of people, the vast majority of them young people, gathered in the center of the American capital, at 99e day of the war between Israel and Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip.
“Immediate ceasefire!” “, chanted the participants, who brandished signs reading “Freedom for Palestine” or “Let Gaza live, stop financing genocide”.
On a platform, several Palestinian-Americans from the Gaza Strip from various states, such as Michigan and Texas, recounted with emotion the fate of their loved ones killed or injured in the Palestinian territory and urged the president’s administration Joe Biden to cease his military and financial support for Israel.
“President Biden could easily stop this madness” by putting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of them said to cheers.
Mobilization in the British capital
The seventh demonstration in support of the population of the Gaza Strip since October 7 took place in London on Saturday.
After a break during the end-of-year holidays, the mobilization started again in the British capital as in around thirty other countries around the world, with a march starting from the City and towards Parliament Square, where is the Palace of Westminster.
In the procession, made up of demonstrators of all ages, many of them coming with families, signs called to “stop bombing children” in Gaza, mixed with olive branches, rainbow flags with the slogan “ Peace” and hundreds of Palestinian flags.
Other signs, representing British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak alongside MM. Netanyahu and Biden urged the United Kingdom to “stop financing genocide”, with some demonstrators displaying their “shame of being English”.
“It’s very frustrating to see that the world does nothing, that our representatives do nothing […]I hope that in the future our government will defend what is right and oppose the killing of innocent children,” Dipesh Kothar, a 37-year-old dentist, who came with his partner and their daughter, told AFP. of two years.
“We want to show the people of Palestine that we are with them and stand up against our government,” said Maleeha Ahmed, 27, who works in the public health service NHS.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the unprecedented attack carried out by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil, which left around 1,140 dead, mainly civilians, according to an AFP count from Israeli assessment.
Military operations carried out since then in the Gaza Strip by Israel have killed 23,843 people and injured more than 60,300, according to the latest report from the Hamas government’s Ministry of Health.