Thousands march in London to demand Gaza ceasefire after UK abstains on key UN vote

Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters have marched through London once again to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas – after the UK abstained in a United Nations vote demanding an immediate halt to the fighting.

Thirteen of the 15-member UN security council voted in favour of calling for a ceasefire on Friday – but the United States vetoed the resolution and Britain abstained, arguing that the wording failed to condemn Hamas’s brutal massacre of Israelis on 7 October.

As the vote took place, Israeli airstrikes continued to wreak destruction in Gaza, with house-to-house fighting reported on Saturday in the southern city of Khan Younis, which is now housing thousands of Palestinians who were told by Israel to flee northern Gaza just weeks ago.

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres had warned that Gaza is at “a breaking point”, facing widespread starvation and the risk of “mass displacement into Egypt”. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas accused Washington of being complicit in alleged war crimes and “the bloodshed of children”.

Anger over Britain’s failure to back the resolution proposed by the United Arab Emirates was evident in London on Saturday, as huge crowds turned out to voice their alarm over the ongoing bloodshed.

Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said protesters were once again “ready to march in our hundreds of thousands” to call for a ceasefire, as well as “an end to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people” and the “complicity of our government and companies in supporting that oppression”.

The march through the capital began at Bank Junction at midday and will finish in Parliament Square later this afternoon, following a route that takes it past St Paul’s Cathedral and Somerset House.

People on the march held signs with the words “Free Palestine” and “End the siege”, while some repeated familiar chants labelling Israel “a terrorist state” and the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

An exclusion zone is in place prohibiting any protesters from assembling around the Israeli embassy. Protesters have been warned that they must stick to the agreed route, under Section 12 of the Public Order Act.

“Further conditions are in place that mean speeches must end by 4pm and the assembly at the end of the protest must end by 5pm,” the Metropolitan Police said.

Scotland Yard said a man had been arrested on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence.

“As the march formed up, officers identified a man with a placard making comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany,” the force said.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters and counter-protesters have converged on the British capital’s streets since the war ignited nine weeks ago, sparked by Hamas’s cross-border incursion into Israel which saw the militants massacre civilians and take some 240 people hostage.

Britain’s UN ambassador, Dame Barbara Woodward, said on Friday that the UK backs “further and longer pauses” to get aid to Palestinians and to allow the release of more Israeli hostages.

But she argued to the council that “we cannot vote in favour of a resolution which does not condemn the atrocities Hamas committed against innocent Israeli civilians”, adding: “Calling for a ceasefire ignores the fact that Hamas has committed acts of terror and is still holding civilians hostage.”