File:A Pro Palestine Protester Speaks with a PSU Police Officer (53261684313).jpg

A Pro Palestine protester speaks with a PSU Police Officer at the northern edge of London's Trafalgar Square at a moment of tension in the crowd, following several arrests. For notes regarding the tension between protesters and police late in the afternoon of 14 October and on why some protesters may have felt it necessary to keep their faces covered, please see the section at the bottom of this commentary

On Saturday 14 October thousands of people demonstrated in London in solidarity with Palestinians. It was not just a reaction to the devastating bombing of Gaza and the total blockade of energy, fuel, electricity, food and water from 2.3 million Palestinians living in the city and the surrounding strip.

It was also a determination to see an end to -

1) Palestinian suffering from 75 years of Israeli occupation. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since 1967 is officially recognised by the United Nations and most of the world despite the fact that the occupation is often ignored or sometimes even denied by Western media. As Amnesty International reports Israeli occupation has resulted in "systematic human rights violations against Palestinians living there."

<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupa...</a>

2) Palestinians living under a highly restrictive Apartheid regime as recognised by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and War on Want. Across the West Bank Palestinians are banned from driving on numerous roads that cross the region and as War on Want explains "Jewish Israelis and Palestinians are treated differently in almost every aspect of life: housing, education, health, employment, family life, residence and freedom of movement. Dozens of Israeli laws and policies institutionalise this prevailing system of racial discrimination and domination."

<a href="https://waronwant.org/news-analysis/israeli-apartheid-factsheet?gclid=Cj0KCQjwm66pBhDQARIsALIR2zDcaufbcTHN6VSg9L71b4Z5DjpgFHl5SJboso9xjAvA_3F0MiRzKS4aAs4REALw_wcB" rel="noreferrer nofollow">waronwant.org/news-analysis/israeli-apartheid-factsheet?g...</a>

3) Restrictions on movement. Across the West Bank there are some 650 Israeli military checkpoints through which only some Palestinians are allowed to pass, often with humiliating questioning and delays, so that they can travel to other towns whether to visit families, seeking medical treatment or for any other reason. In Gaza, travel is even more difficult and only a tiny minority with work permits have been allowed to cross the border - the rest have to remain in what is often described as the world's largest open air prison - the densely populated Gaza strip housing some 2.3 million people.

3) The 16 years of siege imposed by Israel on Gaza which means that around 56% of children suffer from anemia and only 4% had access to safe drinking water even before the outbreak of conflict this month.

<a href="https://www.unicef.org/sop/what-we-do/wash-water-sanitation-and-hygiene#:~:text=As 96 per cent of,is the desalination of seawater" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.unicef.org/sop/what-we-do/wash-water-sanitation-and-h...</a>.

<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4391478/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4391478/</a>

4) The never ending process of Israeli expansion across Palestinian land, including the demolition of 55,000 Palestinian homes since 1967 on a near monthly basis, the cutting down of their olive trees and the ploughing up of their farms to make room for yet more illegal settlements subsidised by the Israeli government. These settlements are illegal under international law, which rightly recognises the 1967 border. However, since 1967, Israel has constructed 250 settlements across the West Bank in which over 633,000 Israelis live in subsidised and often luxurious housing with swimming pools and manicured lawns, an unimaginable privilege to the vast majority of Palestinians.

<a href="https://icahd.org/2020/03/15/end-home-demolitions-an-introduction/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">icahd.org/2020/03/15/end-home-demolitions-an-introduction/</a>

<a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/westbank_a0_25_06_2020_final.pdf" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/westbank_a0_25_06_202...</a>

5) Never ending acts of settler terrorism against Palestinians. Western media rightly condemns occasional Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, including the appalling atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October. However, for years illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank have staged attacks against Palestinians, sometimes motivated sheerly by hatred, but often by the desire to inflict terror and to ethnically cleanse an area. The most recent incident was an attack on Wednesday last week in which masked settlers killed three Palestinian villagers and then killed a Palestinian father and son attending the funeral the next day.

<a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/10/13/israel-settlers-gaza-palestinians-west-bank/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">theintercept.com/2023/10/13/israel-settlers-gaza-palestin...</a>

<a href="https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-dynamics-of-israeli-settler-terrorism-and-us-options/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-dynamics-of-israeli-settler...</a>

6) The division of Palestinian land by the separation wall. The 708 km Separation Wall, completed in 2005, was supposedly built to protect Israel from any Palestinians that might be able to enter the country without permission, but 85% of it runs up to 18 km inside the internationally recognised 1967 boundary ("Green Line"), frequently dividing Palestinians villagers from their farmland as well as running through the middle of farms and dividing arable land from key water supplies. Some 10% of the West Bank now lies between the wall and the 1967 border, an area into which everyone, except Palestinians, is allowed entry. Not surprisingly, the International Court of Justice has issued an advisory opinion that the separation wall is a contravention of international law and in 2003 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution demanding its removal by 144 votes to just 4. Analysts also fear that the wall acts as a de facto annexation of all the Palestinian land that lies to the west of it.

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier" rel="noreferrer nofollow">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier</a>

7) The myth of Palestinian rejectionism. Western mainstream media usually maintains falsely that it is Palestinians that have constantly rejected a two-state solution, whereas the opposite is the case. Arab states and the Palestinians have frequently made clear their willingness to negotiate a future two-state solution on the basis of the 1967 frontiers, while Israel is committed to preventing any such solution and continuing its territorial expansion. As early as 1976, Egypt, Syria and Jordan presented a two-state solution resolution to the UN Security Council based on the 1967 Green Line (in accordance with the international consensus) but it was vetoed outright by the United States, even though Washington at the time publicly acknowledged the illegality of all Israeli settlements across the Palestinian West Bank. The same happened again in 1980. Later in 1988, the PLO put forward their position in a declaration by the Palestinian National Council calling for a Palestinian state alongside Israel with guarantees of security to both countries. However in May 1989, Israel's Likud-Labour coalition government made it crystal clear that they would not accept an "additional" Palestinian state between Jordan and Israel, regardless of what Jordanians, Palestinians or the rest of the world might think. The founding charter of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party still "flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan river."

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud" rel="noreferrer nofollow">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud</a>

8) The frequent killing by Israeli security forces of peaceful protesters, women, children, journalists and medics, including the assassination of renowned Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh in May last year. In the nine months of 2023 prior to 7 October, 248 Palestinians, 40 of them children, had been killed by Israeli soldiers, but these deaths attracted almost no attention in the Western media. Palestinian lives have always been very cheap.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMIZTiN-TrE" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMIZTiN-TrE</a>

9) The current refusal of Israel to allow any journalists into the Gaza Strip so they can see and report on, obviously at their own risk, the destruction and casualties and suffering of the civilian population.

10) An end to Israeli soldiers controlling access to and frequently preventing Muslims from visiting the Al Aqsa Mosque in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem [Al Quds], considered the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina. On several occasions, Israeli troops and/or police have also attacked worshippers using batons, stun grenades and tear gas, igniting understandable anger across the Islamic World. Radical Israeli settlers also sometimes enter under the protection of Israeli security forces and some also perform Jewish rituals in contravention of current agreements about non-Muslims being allowed in, but only as visitors.

<a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-settlers-storm-aqsa-compound-under-police-protection" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.newarab.com/news/israeli-settlers-storm-aqsa-compound...</a>

<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/3/12/israeli-police-assault-worshippers-close-al-aqsa-compound" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/3/12/israeli-police-assault-w...</a>

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NOTES REGARDING TENSIONS between Palestine solidarity protesters and the police in Trafalgar Square on 14 October 2023.

The official rally wound down in Whitehall around 4 pm but later many protesters gathered to continue chanting and carrying placards and flags for Palestine in Trafalgar Square, just a five minute walk away. It was also presumably a convenient location for some of the many Muslim protesters to hold prayers at dusk - around a hundred prayed at a location close to Nelson's column.

Tensions mounted shortly before dusk as at least one demonstrator was arrested, and some protesters thought (and I've no idea whether this is correct) that he, along with other protesters earlier, had been arrested for not uncovering their face when asked in order to reveal their identity.

As far as I could see (I heard very little as I was concentrating on photography) most of what was termed "disorder" amounted to some pushing and shoving and scuffles, the placing of Boycott Israeli Apartheid stickers on a police van window and a number of fireworks being let off. At one stage someone seemed to throw water, unless it was an accident, as some landed on my head, but fortunately only a few droplets. However, I read online that nine police officers had suffered minor injuries.

<a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/suella-braverman-pro-palestine-march-london-met-police-crime-arrests-b1113624.html" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.standard.co.uk/news/london/suella-braverman-pro-pales...</a>

I was also subsequently informed by a friend that "an acquaintance, on their first ever protest, was seated by the water around 1721h when they were struck by a firework on the back of the head, which bounced off and injured their hand," and the protester sustained "a minor burn and shock which was treated by paramedics."

Police had been given unusually strict powers across Westminster, the West End, Knightsbridge, Kensington and Chelsea to force anyone to remove items which obscured their identity under Section 60AA of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. See the map given on the following link -

<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12630283/Hamas-arrested-Met-Police-pro-Palestinian-protesters-London-officers.html" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12630283/Hamas-arrested-...</a>

One freelance photojournalist who I don't know personally but who I often see at protests but never involved in anything illegal and who is always masked whenever I see him, told me that he was instructed by a group of five police officers to remove his full face balaclava or he would be arrested. After a ten minute long discussion during which he explained he needed to wear some protection from covid, an officer offered him a surgical mask which he slipped on while modifying his bally in such a way as to show a little more of his face but not enough to satisfy the officers.

He then had to explain to the officers that he was not happy to rely merely on the mask loops to keep the surgical mask they had provided firmly attached, and they finally allowed him to leave after they ensured he was recorded on their bodycams and with a warning that other officers might arrest him if he did not fully remove his face covering.

When I met him shortly afterwards, although he still had a face covering, he wasn't wearing or carrying anything which might obviously suggest he was anything other than a photographer.

WHY TAKING OFF A MASK MIGHT BE DANGEROUS FOR SOME PROTESTERS

It's important to note that masking at protests is essential for some dual nationals and those with families in authoritarian regimes, particularly in the Middle East. Other people consider it essential for other reasons, such as protection from UK state surveillance or from covid, particularly with the increasing number of cases of the new variant in recent weeks.

With regards to the use of masks by those with links to some Middle East countries, I have a friend I often meet at Palestine protests who is an Egyptian-British national and he was detained on arrival in Egypt and questioned about photographs showing his presence at Palestine solidarity protests in Britain.

The Egyptian dictatorship, like other authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes, is extremely concerned that activism for Palestinian human rights and freedom endangers stirring up anger on the streets, especially since many such governments, including Egypt, enjoy the financial and strategic benefits of close, if necessarily discreet relations, with Israel. Consequently they take any participation in such protests, even if in the UK, extremely seriously. I believe that is the main reason why many protesters with family or other personal links to such countries chose to wear masks on Palestine protests.

I don't know if any of the arrests at the end of the day were for refusing to remove a face covering - I understand there was at least one such arrest of a 38 year old man at some point in time during the rally

<a href="https://news.met.police.uk/news/update-on-arrests-and-investigations-following-demonstration-in-central-london-473734" rel="noreferrer nofollow">news.met.police.uk/news/update-on-arrests-and-investigati...</a>

- but I think it was unwise for the police to be given the power to order people to remove them as with the presence of so many photojournalists and news crews, anyone's identity once revealed could be then known not just to the police but also to any onlooker or anyone watching any media report in which their recognisable image among the crowd might appear.