Violent pro-Palestine mobs have clashed with police outside Downing Street as shocking footage shows Met Police officers donning riot gear attempting to gain control over the chaos. Videos posted to social media on Tuesday night captured the moment swarms of Palestine supporters took over the streets around Parliament before banging on car windows and surrounding double-decker buses.
Swathes of cops donning hi-vis police jackets and helmets were seen scuffling with activists as footage taken by demonstrators showed masses of chanting crowds blocking roads and running riot in the streets. Video taken at 10.30pm showed sprawling crowds of protesters yelling as they came face to face with Met Police officers – on the same that has also seen dramatic protests erupt across France and Italy.
In an earlier clip, taken outside Downing Street and shared on X, formerly Twitter, cops could be seen tussling with members of the public with one woman seen on the ground as officers worked their way through the crowd. The poster claimed: ‘My elderly aunt got punched on the arm by a psychotic angry officer’. Police and protesters were filmed tackling and shoving one another as the chaotic scenes unravelled and spiralled into further violence.
The protests were hosted in response to Sunday’s Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment in Rafah that left at least 45 people dead – an incident that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a ‘tragic mishap’. The mass demonstration was organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and saw tens of thousands of people displaying messages including: ‘Stop bombing children’, ‘All eyes on Rafah’, and ‘Massacring over 14,000 children does not equal self defence’. Chants of ‘We are the people! We won’t be silenced! Stop the bombing now, now, now’ could also be heard ringing through the streets as demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
The huge rally left usually-busy roads completely blocked off and unavailable for use as the large numbers of protesters took over the streets. It comes just three weeks after Downing Street was surrounded by thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters following the Israeli seize of the Rafah border crossing. Jeremy Corbyn and militant rail union chief Mick Lynch were among the speakers at the rally.
Around 5,000 protesters descended on Number 10 with placards from the Socialist Worker and the Palestinian Forum in Britain, which reportedly has links to Hamas. Signs included those saying ‘all eyes on Rafah’ and others with the genocidal phrase ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. On Tuesday, huge demonstrations were also seen across France , Italy and Poland , as activists marched to voice their support for war-torn Palestine. Yesterday evening, Paris, and Bologna saw demonstrators blocking roads and clambering up historic monuments as activists branded Israel ‘assassins’ after Sunday’s deadly airstrike. Thousands of French people stormed though cities including Paris, Lille, Lyon, and Strasbourg to show their solidarity.
Footage captured in France showed demonstrators brandishing the red, white, black, and green flags while donning keffiyehs and chanting ‘We do not kill a child, whether Jewish or Palestinian: Stop bombings, free Palestine’ and ‘Rafah, Gaza we are with you’. In Paris, thousands of people gathered at Place de la République to display their unwavering support. The mass procession travelled towards the Israeli Embassy while shouting: ‘Israel assassin, Macron complicit’ and ‘Israel get out of the way, Palestine is not yours’. Francois Rippe, vice-president of the France Palestine Solidarity Association (AFPS) denounced the Israeli bombings on a refugee camp in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the tragic deaths of 45 people and left another 249 injured. ‘Palestinians were burned alive by Israeli bombings. This is one massacre too many,’ he said.
The protests in France began on Monday after the IDF strike targeting senior Hamas figures killed dozens of displaced Palestinians in Rafah. One large banner at the rally showed presidents Emmanuel Macron of France Joe Biden of the United States and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the slogan ‘it is humanity they are assassinating.’ Political figures were also spotted in the crowds, such as Marseille MP Manuel Bompard, who tweeted: ‘Present at the rally in Paris, in support of the Palestinians bombed yesterday in Rafah’. The protests today come as French President Emmanuel Macron called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. ‘These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians. I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire,’ Macron said, adding he was ‘outraged’ by the strike.
Protests were also held Monday in Madrid and Barcelona. Bologna, Italy, also hosted a massive protest on Tuesday which saw demonstrators occupying train stations while demanding justice for Palestine. Huge crowds of yelling people could be seen in footage climbing across railway tracks with Palestinian flags in hand – completely blocking the track from use. The station’s platforms were brimming with protesters, while other spilled dangerously onto the tracks as they chanted and condemned Israel’s airstrike on Rafah.
Almost 700miles away in Warsaw, Poland, students gathered outside Warsaw University to announced negotiations with the university’s head Alojzy Nowak on discontinuing cooperation with Israeli partners. They could be seen in images holding flags and speaking through megaphones while displaying cards reading: ‘Students for Palestine’. The eruption of protests comes after Israel’s Sunday attack on a Rafah refugee camp that killed at least 45. The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled area said about half of the dead were women, children and older adults. Some people died from the impact of the bomb, while others ‘reportedly burned to death’, according to Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Barefoot children wandered around the charred wreckage on Monday as searches for the dead continued and mourning families prepared to bury their loved ones.
Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in parliament that ‘something unfortunately went tragically wrong’ with the airstrike. ‘We are investigating the incident and will reach conclusions, because this is our policy,’ he added. The strike came two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population had sought shelter before Israel’s recent incursion. The airstrike was reported hours after Hamas fired a barrage of rockets from Gaza that set off air raid sirens as far away as Tel Aviv for the first time in months in a show of resilience more than seven months into Israel’s massive air, sea and ground offensive.
Earlier on Sunday, before the deadly airstrikes, aid lorries entered Gaza from southern Israel under a new agreement to bypass the Rafah crossing with Egypt after Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side of it earlier this month. But it was not immediately clear if humanitarian groups could access the aid because of fighting. Egypt refuses to reopen its side of the Rafah crossing until control of the Gaza side is handed back to Palestinians. It agreed to temporarily divert traffic through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, Gaza’s main cargo terminal, after a call between US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. But the Kerem Shalom crossing has been largely inaccessible because of Israel’s offensive in Rafah.
Israel says it has allowed hundreds of lorries to enter, but United Nations agencies say it is usually too dangerous to retrieve the aid. ‘With the humanitarian operation near collapse, the secretary-general emphasizes that the Israeli authorities must facilitate the safe pickup and delivery of humanitarian supplies from Egypt entering Kerem Shalom,’ the spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement. The war between Israel and Hamas has killed nearly 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count. Around 80 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, severe hunger is widespread and UN officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine. Hamas triggered the war with its October 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized some 250 hostages.
Hamas still holds some 100 hostages and the remains of around 30 others after most of the rest were released during a ceasefire last year. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must take over Rafah to eliminate Hamas’ remaining battalions and achieve ‘total victory’ over the militants, who recently regrouped in other parts of Gaza where the military has operated. The war has also heightened tensions in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
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