Pro-Palestinian marches draw thousands in Europe

Thousands of people joined pro-Palestinian marches in London, Berlin and Dublin on Saturday, calling for an end to Israeli strikes on Gaza three years after Hamas's October 7 attack.

In London, several thousand marchers carried placards reading “End the genocide” and “Free Palestine” as they moved along a route near the British parliament. Aimee Shalan, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told AFP the march was marking three years of what she called the ongoing genocide in Gaza. She said Western sanctions over settler violence did not go far enough and called for “full sanctions on Israel”.

London's Metropolitan Police said they had arrested 20 people, including a man and a woman with placards supporting Palestine Action, an organisation banned under UK law. A small counter-demonstration was organised by Stop The Hate UK, a Jewish-led, pro-Israel campaign group.

Ahead of the march, police said they would use public order powers to require anyone wearing a face covering to hide their identity to remove it. Senior Met officer Carl Galvin said police would take a zero-tolerance approach to hate crime and other offending.

In Berlin, a similar march organised by United for Palestine drew about 3,500 people as it set off from a square between the chancellery and parliament, according to police. Many protesters criticised Germany's arms exports to Israel and carried banners condemning Berlin's military support.

In Dublin, protesters took part in a march organised by the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

A ceasefire began a year ago and, although Israel has reduced its level of attacks, it has kept striking Gaza on a near-daily basis. Gaza's health ministry says strikes have killed about 1,450 Palestinians since the ceasefire.

The protests came three days after the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israel's history. The attack killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, and militants took 251 hostages into Gaza, 44 of them already dead. Israel launched a military offensive in response that has left most of Gaza in ruins and killed more than 74,200 people, according to Gaza's health ministry.