2023-11-25 05:58:06
This Saturday, November 25, for the third major march in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza, and more broadly “the liberation of Gaza”the NGO Friends of Al-Aqsa (named after the largest mosque in Jerusalem) is one of the many organizations coordinating the arrival in London of around a thousand people since the United Kingdom.
“During the demonstration on November 11, we chartered twenty-four fifty-seater buses, says Ismaïl Patel, its president and founder, based in Leicester. We have 400 to 500 volunteers, compared to 30 to 40 normally, who are responsible for distributing buses, printing and distributing stickers and leaflets during the march, and crowd management. »
A motley coalition of Muslim entities
The marches in favor of Gaza are among the largest demonstrations in London in the last twenty years, after those against the invasion of Iraq (February 2003) and those against Brexit (February 2019). The march of October 28 attracted 100,000 people, that of November 11 would have brought together 300,000, according to police figures, 800,000 according to the organizers.
Since the flaring of the conflict between Israel and Hamas following the massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7, six organizations have joined forces to organize large-scale marches every two weeks. A heterogeneous coalition of Muslim, pro-Palestinian or more broadly pacifist and anti-imperialist entities.
Some of its leading figures are close to Hamas, according to the British media: Telegraphthe Times and the Daily Mail ; Zaher Birawi, the president and spokesperson of the Palestinian Forum in Britain, is considered by Israel to be a member of Hamas.
For his part, Muhammad Qassem Sawalha, the co-founder and former director (between 1999 and 2007) of the Muslim Association of Britain, would have been a member of the Hamas political bureau between 2013 and 2017, according to the Israeli government. Although he no longer has any responsibility within the NGO, his son remains one of the vice-presidents.
“We always meet together with the national police before the marches”, says Ben Jamal, 60, director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), son of a Palestinian Anglican vicar whose Christian-Arab family was expelled from West Jerusalem at the creation of Israel in 1948 and a mother British. “We have to negotiate the route with them, during several meetings. Then, we share the logistics,” says this head of the largest Palestinian rights organization in Europe.
A majority of Muslims in the street
Ismaïl Patel, from Friends of Al-Aqsa, was already present twenty years ago in the streets of London in the demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Today he says to himself “surprised by the mix of people we transported in our buses”, who contacted his association via social networks. “Families, children, elderly people, young people, Muslims and non-Muslims”, testifies this native of South Africa. He cites very diverse motivations: “The colonization of Palestine by Israel, apartheid towards the Palestinians…” But also the question of sovereignty over holy places, including the Al-Aqsa mosque. The majority of demonstrators come from Muslim communities (from the Maghreb, the Middle East and Pakistan) in a country where6.5% of the population is Muslim.
According to a recent survey by the YouGov institute, 76% of Britons are ” very “ or “rather favorable” for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. More broadly, according to Ben Jamal, “this conflict resonates with many Muslims because it highlights the Islamophobia of Western leaders and more broadly their non-respect for the rights of minorities”.
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