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SORRY FOR THE DELAY. MORE PHOTOS FROM MONDAY'S PALESTINE SOLIDARITY PROTEST IN LONDON COMING SOON.

المتظاهرون المتضامنون مع فلسطين يدعون إلى السلام وإنهاء الاحتلال الإسرائيلي والفصل العنصري

I was deeply shocked when James Cleverly, the UK's foreign secretary, was asked specifically about Israel's intensified blockade of Gaza. He didn't say anything critical about Israel's recent decision to stop all electricity, fuel, food, and water from going into the area.

لقد صدمت بشدة عندما سُئل جيمس كليفرلي، وزير خارجية المملكة المتحدة، على وجه التحديد عن الحصار الإسرائيلي المكثف على غزة. ولم يقل أي شيء ينتقد قرار إسرائيل الأخير بوقف دخول الكهرباء والوقود والغذاء والمياه إلى المنطقة

<a href="https://twitter.com/OnlinePalEng/status/1711471826692436328" rel="noreferrer nofollow">twitter.com/OnlinePalEng/status/1711471826692436328</a>

There are more than two million people living there, and this brutal form of collective punishment is clearly a war crime which threatens the lives of all of them. As is the round the clock bombing of some 2000 targets over just four days.

ويعيش هناك أكثر من مليوني شخص، ومن الواضح أن هذا الشكل الوحشي من العقاب الجماعي يشكل جريمة حرب تهدد حياة الجميع. جريمة حرب خطيرة أخرى هي القصف على مدار الساعة لنحو 2000 هدف في غزة خلال أربعة أيام فقط

The Gaza Strip is a small densely populated area which is only about one quarter the size of London. As of 10 October, over 900 residential units and 70 industrial units have been destroyed, including the deliberate targeting of some residential apartments without prior warning, and as a result the bombing has already killed 185 Palestinian children, 120 women and seven journalists.

<a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israel-commits-widespread-war-crimes-gaza-humanitarian-catastrophe-imminent" rel="noreferrer nofollow">reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israe...</a>

Netenyahu, Israel's prime minister, has called on Palestinian civilians to flee the air strikes he has unleashed which is reducing much of Gaza to rubble. However, the two neighbouring states, Israel and the Egyptian dictatorship of Fatah Abdul El-Sisi, have sealed the borders, making any attempt to escape the strip suicidal.

When Goav Gallant, Israel's Defence Minister, announced the intensification of the siege, he added that "we are fighting against human animals," phraseology often favoured by genocidal regimes. The United States and Britain, which have effectively given the green light to these brutal measures of collective punishment, are now clearly complicit in this war crime, and in Israel's war of aggression against the two million Palestinians who live on this tiny strip of land.

For years Gaza has been under what the UN recognises as Israeli occupation, since Israel controls everything that is allowed in, and regularly acts, every few years, to cripple the city's infrastructure with air strikes, so that even before these latest attacks, only 10% of Gazans had access to clean drinking water while the level of anemia among young children was 59%.

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

No right minded person would not also condemn the brutal and horrific Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, but we have to understand that terrorism can not be eradicated by continuing, intensifying and expanding the 75 year long occupation. It is the crime of illegal occupation which encompasses and leads to (though that's not the same as justifying) the near inevitability of violence.

Many Palestinians feel they have no other real, long-term way to resist the Israeli armed forces and a tiny number of them resort to unacceptable and sometimes irrational, terrible, and counterproductive acts of terrorism against innocent Israeli civilians. We should rightly condemn all such violence, but it's unlikely to stop without an end to the occupation.

It should not be forgotten that 248 Palestinians, 40 of them children, had been killed by Israeli soldiers during the first nine months of 2023 prior to last Saturday, but these deaths attracted almost no attention in the Western media.

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

Meanwhile, Palestinian homes continue to be bulldozed to make way for new illegal Israeli settlements and when Netenyahu addressed the UN General Assembly in September he displayed a map of the Middle East with an "Israel", outlined in blue, which clearly included within it all of the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, a de facto way of announcing their annexation.