https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/09/thousands-call-for-gaza-ceasefire-at-huge-london-protest
Police say 13 protesters arrested during march from Bank Junction to Parliament Square
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters gathered in Parliament Square, London, on Saturday to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The protesters marched from Bank Junction to Westminster, with many holding signs with the words “Free Palestine” and “End the siege”.
Police said that one woman was arrested after the force’s specialist Voyager CCTV monitoring team identified her as being wanted for an offence that occurred at a previous protest on 28 October.
On Friday the UK abstained on a UN security council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, a motion that was vetoed by the US.
“We were oppressed by white people, as black South Africans we had to fight for our freedoms, we are still not entirely free,” she said.
Previous weekends have seen thousands of protesters and counter-protesters converging on the capital.
The original article contains 319 words, the summary contains 137 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Why are the people calling for a ceasefire always calling on only Israel to cease? Hamas has continued fighting, killing, and bombing Israel as well. They are the ones who ended the ceasefire by refusing to continue releasing hostages (including babies) and launching multiple attacks.
Everyone wants this war to end. Hamas could surrender and release the hostages and there'd be peace tomorrow. Instead Hamas has determined to fight to the last one remains alive.
I get that they view Israel as "theirs" (from the river to the sea means all of Israel and Palestine). But do they really think Israel will just be gone one day?
Israel doesn't have to be gone in order for Palestinians to be free. People are protesting because this isn't a war, this is resistance fighters standing up against an occupation and apartheid system. A free Palestine does not mean Israel and Zionists wiped off the map. It means Palestinians living with dignity, human rights, and self determination; things they are not given now, and have not been given for 75 years.
Yes, there are those in the fringe that believe Israel needs to be wiped off the map. Any political situation will breed extremists. But in order for peace to be achieved, first and foremost is the dismantling of Israel's APARTHEID SYSTEM.
this is why we rally. Our governments must understand that we are tasking them with putting pressure on Israel to change its ways. This is how apartheid fell in South Africa.
Free Palestine.
Salam and shalom to all citizens of Palestine.
Edit: forgot to add: those extremists do not represent the movement as a whole
So what does a ceasefire mean? If Hamas is not releasing the hostages and continues to fire rockets and bullets at Israel how is that a ceasefire?
Hamas wants to release the hostages as part of a ceasefire agreement. That's why they took them in the first place.
Also, Israel declared war against Palestine in 1967 with their occupation, and against Gaza specifically in 2005 with the blockade. From that point onward Israel is the aggressor; if they give Palestinians peace and then Hamas continues firing rocket attacks your point holds. I haven't seen anyone make the point you're arguing against.
Hamas wants to release the hostages as part of a ceasefire agreement. That's why they took them in the first place.
Why did they stop releasing them while there was a already a ceasefire? No one has answered my original question. I'm just trying to understand that.
The ceasefire was for a limited number of Israeli hostages and a limited number of Palestinian hostages to be released, along with a limited time truce. As for why that's the case, Israel didn't want a permanent (or long-term) ceasefire. They vowed the war wasn't over the day they signed the truce, remember?
what does a ceasefire mean
For Hamas? Nothing. There a news about Hamas firing rockets from humanitarian zone, for example. There a video of Hamas stealing humanitarian supplies. They don't care about all this "political" fuse around them. They never have been. They just wanna kill jews, cause that is their religion.
Upd. Also, before voting on my comment, look closely what Hamas did. And if you still proceed to defending point "Israel is wrong it's need to be stopped" I will at least know whom I dealing with.
A ceasefire comes about as an agreement between the parties. That's why it is hard to get to (Hamas won't stop defending Gaza, and the IOF doesn't want to stop shelling/infiltrating). In order for the two parties to lay down arms even for a moment is with negotiations and agreements. We saw during the ceasefire, multiple negotiations, resulting in specific numbers of hostages from both sides released. These numbers weren't decided at the time of release, they were specifics negotiated and agreed upon between parties.
Everyone that I know, that is calling for a ceasefire wants to see a permanent ceasefire. Not one that begins with Israel stating they will return to obliterating Gaza as soon as its over, but one that results in a process toward Palestinian self-determination, ALL hostages released both by Hamas and Israel. Keep in mind, Israel holds thousands of Palestinians hostage, including many without charge or trial and during the ceasefire, Israel detained more Palestinians than they released.
There is one issue though: Hamas will never negotiate with Israel (they literally want to wipe out every single Jew) and current israel's government probably won't negotiate, as well.
Hamas does not want to wipe out every single Jew. From their 2017 charter:
Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity
And yes, I agree Israel won't want to negotiate, because they have no interest in allowing Palestinians the right to self determination, which is what Hamas would be negotiating for.
Just a point of clarification: Israel does not hold hostages. Everyone in Israeli custody is suspected, charged, or convicted of a crime.
Some have argued that Israel's criminal justice system is severely broken, and that it's very biased, and even that it is rife with wrongful convictions and lack of due process. But it is counterfactual to say that Israel is holding hostages. No one is held by the State of Israel as a civilian who was captured and held on threat of life with the purpose of being released in exchange for a political goal. You will never hear Hamas supporters name even one.
People can twist and torture the definition of the word "hostage" to the point that it becomes meaningless in an attempt to establish some type of moral equivalency, but it will never be objectively true.
Holding someone in "military administration", without trial, without charge, without access to a lawyer or family, for political gain sounds a lot like a hostage to me, ESPECIALLY when the detainee in question is a child, of which there are hundreds.
Thousands of Palestinians held without trial for years.
Tens of thousands dead Palestinians, most of which children.
Many more displaced, being pushed out of Gaza to be refugees.
For months, they have been denied food, water, electricity, and Internet.
Meanwhile,
Israel uses AI to find 100s if targets daily, using drones and aircrafts. No boots on the ground. Billions in international aid. The people living life largely uninterrupted. Settlers getting more and more "free" land.
Can you piece together why the focus is on Israel?
Why the government is afraid to say "we would like a casefire in gaza" is the real question..
There is a saying which says: "If israel puts down the weapons, there will be genocide whilst if Hamas puts down weapons, there will be peace."
Israel has been in violation of the GCIV since 2007, it's been a globally recognized humanitarian crisis, and an extremely successful genocide/ethnic cleansing.
Israel has killed over 10x as many Palestinians compared to all pro-Palestinian groups combined (not just Hamas) since the year 2000. Since (and including) October 7th, Israel has killed 18,000 people (8000 children) Palestinians. Hamas has killed around 1200 people.
Maybe you think, like the Israeli defense minister that the killing of thousands of innocent children is justified because we're dealing with "human animals". The goal being to objectify Palestinians the same way we objectify non-human animals, so they can be slaughtered just as ruthlessly and effectively.
The formation of the genocidal state of Israel, which happened so recently that our current president was alive, involved the forceful removal and ethnic cleansing of almost a million native Palestinians.
We're far enough removed from the ethnic cleansing of native Americans in the U.S that most people recognize it was wrong for Europeans to invade, colonize, and genocide the native population, but when we see the exact same thing happening in our lifetimes, people like yourself happily back settler colonialism. It's genuinely fucking astounding.