People will be out on the streets in bigger numbers if Israel continues to be granted “impunity”, a prominent organiser of the pro-Palestine marches in the UK has said.
Ben Jamal, 61, is the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) – a UK advocacy group which has been at the helm of organising pro-Palestine marches across the country which have taken place since October 14 2023, following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 of last year.
Other organisations involved include Stop the War, Friends of Al-Aqsa, the Palestinian Forum in Britain, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain.
Saturday marks the 20th national March for Palestine and will begin at Russell Square in Bloomsbury, London, with Mr Jamal, who is British-Palestinian, telling the PA news agency the marches will continue – and may happen more frequently – until action against Israel is taken.
“We didn’t anticipate marching for a year – we’re in a pattern of marching every three to four weeks, but we keep that under review and we’re conscious in the current circumstances that may need to adjust,” said Mr Jamal, who is based in London.
“We have been saying as a movement from very early on, if you continue to grant Israel impunity, this will escalate – it will start to attack its neighbours.
“Where will that take us? Probably that will bring more people to the streets who may have a deep concern about Palestinian rights, but will say actually now I see the risk of a major world war.
“We need to be out on the streets in even bigger numbers to stop this carnage and stop Britain being drawn into it, because that’s the other risk – we’re already military engaged.”
He said up until January between 300,000 to 500,000 would attend the marches and around 80,000 to 100,000 have attended the last three to four – but he expects that number to rise for Saturday’s march.
The most popular march happened on November 11 2023 – Armistice Day – shortly after then-home secretary Suella Braverman labelled them “hate marches”.
“We estimated there were at least a million people marching that day,” he said.
“That made it one of the biggest political demonstrations in British political history.”
He said there are people from different backgrounds who have joined to show their support.
“The demographic I would say is a lot of young people, a lot of people with babies and children in pushchairs and quite a few people – and this reflects the demographics of PSC’s membership across the country – who are retired and have cared about this issue for a very, very long time,” he said.
He said at every demonstration there has been an organised Jewish Bloc for any members of the Jewish community who wish to attend.
Reflecting on the importance of marches, he said they have three purposes – to show solidarity, galvanise people and “create a lever of pressure”.
“Palestinians an the moment, particularly in Gaza, but across all of historic Palestine I would say, feel abandoned by the international community in the sense of 40,000 of (them) have been killed in Gaza and western powers do not act, but when we march, (they) know it’s noticed,” he said.
“I get messages from comrades in Palestine saying we see you and that’s important in terms of people’s ability to continue to resist, to continue to feel there is a prospect of hope.
“The second purpose is it’s a way of galvanising people and I’ve been conscious in the past 11 months of the number of times people have come up to me… who say to me, with all the horror I see and the despair of our complicity in this, this is the place where there’s some sense of home and community.
“The third thing is you’re trying to create a lever of pressure, they create a political pressure point.”
Despite no longer having any family members who live in Gaza, he said he has regularly been in contact with British Palestinians over the past few months, providing some with the opportunity to speak with Members of Parliament in the House of Commons about what their families in the war-torn region are facing.
“One had over 40 members of their family killed and they came to give testimony to that and I don’t know how they were surviving,” he said.
As Israel continues to move further into Lebanon, Mr Jamal said he has been exchanging messages with a cousin who lives there.
“He’s not in a place in Beirut where he’s at the epicentre, but said to me it’s getting closer and closer,” he said.
“He’s gone up into the hills and is looking for how he gets out.”
Almost a year since the first march, Mr Jamal said government action including sanctions and boycotts against Israel needs to be taken alongside the marches.
“I don’t know any other mechanism for ending tyranny and oppression than the resistance of the oppressed people and pressure on the oppressor coming externally,” he said.
“There is no dynamic inside Israeli society that’s going to change this.”
