Pro-Palestine protesters shut down Tower Bridge: Activists let off flares and disrupt traffic as iconic London landmark is closed.
Pro-Palestine protesters forced police to close Tower Bridge this evening as they let off flares and blocked traffic in demand of a ceasefire in Gaza.
Activists were seen waving Palestinian flags and carrying a banner that read ‘Save Gaza, Ceasefire Now’ as they marched across the bridge.
Drummers appeared to lead the march, pounding out a beat as protesters clapped and chanted ‘free, free, Palestine’.
The bridge reopened after City of London Police responded to the rally and seemingly moved in to disperse the protesters.
The march on Tower Bridge comes as Israeli officials prepare to meet tonight to hear of possible progress in mediated negotiations on a new Gaza truce to recover hostages held by Hamas.
Hamas leader Osama Hamdan gas said the group was not at the talks, but asserted to reporters in Beirut on Friday that Israel had refused its main demands, including stopping the ‘aggression’ and withdrawing from the Gaza Strip.
Demonstrators carried a banner that read ‘Save Gaza, Ceasefire Now’ as they marched across the bridge
Videos shared on social media showed how a large group of protesters occupied Tower Bridge this evening in the latest pro-Palestine demonstration in the capital.
Activists sporting umbrellas in the colours of the Palestinian flag chanted for a ceasefire in Gaza. They carried placards accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ and ‘murder’, as they waved their flags and marched.
City of London police took to X at around 5.40pm to confirm the incident. They wrote: ‘Tower Bridge is currently closed due to protest activity. Officers are in attendance at the scene.’
At 6.26pm the force said the bridge has ‘now reopened’ and thanked commuters ‘for your patience’.
Social media users, applauding the demonstrators’ efforts, encouraged activists to ‘shut the roads down until Palestine is free’.
MailOnline has approached the force for comment.
Protesters descended on London today as Israeli leaders prepare to meet tonight to discuss on the next steps after the latest talks with the United States, Egypt and Qatar in search of a deal on pausing the fighting in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu has announced that he’ll convene the Cabinet early next week to ‘to approve the operational plans for action in Rafah,’ including the evacuation of civilians.
Despite widespread warnings from the international community about an Israeli military ground operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population now shelters, Netanyahu’s statement said that ‘only a combination of military pressure and firm negotiations’ would achieve Israel’s aims in the war.
Social media users, applauding the demonstrators’ efforts, encouraged activists to ‘shut the roads down until Palestine is free’
A senior official from Egypt, which along with Qatar is a mediator between Israel and the Hamas militant group, said mediators were waiting for Israel’s official response to a draft deal that includes the release of up to 40 women and older hostages held in Gaza in return for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, mostly women, minors and older people.
The Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said the proposed six-week pause in fighting would include allowing hundreds of aid trucks to enter Gaza every day, including the northern half of the besieged territory. He said that both sides agreed to continue negotiations during the pause for further releases and a permanent cease-fire.
Negotiators face an unofficial deadline of the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan around March 10.
Hamas political official Osama Hamdan noted that the group wasn’t at the talks, but asserted to reporters in Beirut on Friday that Israel had refused its main demands, including stopping the ‘aggression’ and withdrawing from Gaza.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Saturday that the bodies of 92 Palestinians killed in Israeli bombardments were brought to hospitals over the past 24 hours, raising the overall toll in nearly five months of war to 29,606. The total number of wounded rose to nearly 70,000.
The ministry’s death toll doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said that two-thirds of those killed were children and women. Israel says its troops have killed more than 10,000 Hamas fighters, but hasn’t provided details.
An Israeli airstrike hit a house in Rafah, killing at least eight people, including four women and a child, health authorities said. An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies at Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital.
‘Enough, enough. Either the Israelis or us should stop. There should be a truce,’ said neighbor Abdul-Qader Shubeir, who described feeling lost at not being immediately able to put out the fire burning the bodies.
Brazil’s president alleged Saturday that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, doubling down on harsh rhetoric after stirring controversy a week ago by comparing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust in which 6 million Jews and others perished during World War II.
Israel has pushed back against genocide claims made at the UN’s top court and elsewhere, saying its war targets the militant group Hamas, not the Palestinian people. It has held Hamas responsible for civilian deaths, arguing that the group operates from civilian areas.
‘What the Israeli government is doing is not war, it is genocide,’ Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote on X, formerly Twitter. ‘Children and women are being murdered.’
In response to Lula’s initial comments, Israel declared him a persona non grata, summoned Brazil’s ambassador and demanded an apology. Lula recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel for consultations.
Last month, South Africa filed a landmark case with the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians. The court issued a preliminary order ordering Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza.
Israel, created in part as a refuge for survivors of the Holocaust, has accused South Africa of hypocrisy.
South Africa has compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza with the treatment of Black South Africans during apartheid, framing the issues as fundamentally about people oppressed in their homeland.
Israel declared war after the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel in which the terrorists killed about 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages.
More than 100 hostages remain in captivity in Gaza.
The rising civilian death toll and worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza have amplified calls for a cease-fire.
Hunger and infectious diseases are spreading and about 80 per of Gaza’s 2.3million people have been displaced, with about 1.4million crowded into Rafah on the border with Egypt.
‘There are choking, skyrocketing prices. It’s terrifying. There is no source of income. The area is very overcrowded,’ said Hassan Attwa, a displaced man from Gaza City who now shelters in a tent on the sand in Mawasi in the south.
‘The garbage, may God bless you, is not collected at all. It stays piled up. It turns into a mess and clay when it rains. The situation is disastrous in every sense of the word.’
In Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, children banged on pots as part of a protest outside a closed hospital demanding more aid to the north.
Netanyahu has vowed to fight until ‘total victory,’ but is under pressure at home. Police used a water cannon to disperse anti-government protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. Others protested in Jerusalem.
The march on Tower Bridge also comes as Britain’s Conservative Party suspended their former deputy chairman from the parliamentary party, after he refused to apologise for saying London Mayor Sadiq Khan was controlled by Islamists.
Khan, the first Muslim to be mayor of London and a member of the opposition Labour Party, is a frequent target of Conservative criticism for his handling of policing in Britain’s capital, including regular pro-Palestinian marches.
Today’s rally came as the Conservative party decided to suspended Lee Anderson after drawing widespread criticism for claiming that ‘Islamists’ have ‘got control’ of Mayor Khan.
The decision was taken following the former Tory deputy chairman’s ‘refusal to apologise’ for the remarks made on Friday.
Pressure had been mounting on Rishi Sunak to take action over the comments from the Ashfield MP, with Mr Khan saying the ‘deafening silence’ of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet on the matter amounted to condoning racism.
Incidents of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have spiked dramatically across the UK amid increased polarisation since the outbreak of Israel-Hamas was last October.
‘Following his refusal to apologise for comments made yesterday, the chief whip has suspended the Conservative whip from Lee Anderson MP,’ a spokesperson for Tory lawmaker Simon Hart said on Saturday.
Hart’s chief whip position makes him responsible for internal Conservative Party discipline.
On the right-wing GB News channel Friday, Anderson claimed Islamists had ‘got control’ of Khan, who was the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when first elected in London in 2016.
‘He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates,’ added Anderson, the Tory MP for a seat in northern England.
A Conservative source was defending Mr Anderson last night and this morning before he was stripped of party support at around 3pm this afternoon.
This comes after Mayor Khan hit out against Anderson earlier this afternoon for ‘pouring fuel on the fire of anti-Muslim hatred’.
Lee Anderson has been suspended by the Conservative party after he refused to apologise for ‘Islamophobic, racist’ comments where he claimed that London Mayor Sadiq Khan was controlled by ‘Islamists’.
Anderson’s remarks prompted a flood of criticism from across the political spectrum, with Labour Party chairwoman Anneliese Dodds calling them ‘unambiguously racist and Islamophobic’.
Conservative business minister Nus Ghani, senior backbencher Sajid Javid and Tory peer Gavin Barwell were among senior Tory figures to join the complaints, with Barwell calling the comments a ‘despicable slur’.
The Muslim Council of Britain said they were ‘disgusting’ and extremist.
Khan, who labelled the comments ‘anti-Muslim’ and ‘racist’, had earlier Saturday complained about ‘deafening silence’ from Sunak and his senior ministers in response, arguing that amounted to condoning racism.
Within hours, Hart’s office had issued its statement announcing Anderson’s suspension. The MP was yet to comment on the decision.
Anderson will now sit as an independent lawmaker in parliament.
His suspension comes after dozens of lawmakers stormed out of parliament on Wednesday after the Commons descended in chaos over the Gaza vote.
The speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, decided to ignore precedent and allow a vote which helped the opposition Labour Party avoid a large-scale rebellion among its own lawmakers over its position on the war.
Lawmakers from the governing Conservatives and the opposition Scottish National Party (SNP) left the debating chamber in protest and some tried to take the rare step of holding proceedings in private.
Hundreds of activists gathered outside Palace of Westminster on Wednesday as the debate was underway.
Demonstrators waved Palestine flags and chanted ‘Israel is a terrorist state’ while they waited to speak to MPs as part of the ‘mass lobbying’ session.
Projections were shone on the Elizabeth Tower reading ‘Gaza’ and ‘stop bombs’ during the rally as MPs debated an SNP motion demanding an ‘immediate ceasefire’ in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Others waved placards calling an end to combat actions between Hamas fighters and the IDF, ahead of a feared ground action in Rafah where some 1.5million displaced Palestinians are sheltering from the ongoing war.
Sir Lindsay eventually apologised and said he had made his decision to allow lawmakers to vote on a range of views because he was concerned about their security after some had faced threats of violence over their stance on the war.
‘It is regrettable and I apologise for the decision,’ he told parliament. ‘I did not want it to end like this.’
The debate in parliament was initiated by the SNP, which put forward a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire. Labour and the Conservatives, which have both backed Israel while expressing concern over its actions in Gaza, then proposed amendments, with different conditions they said were necessary before there should be a pause in fighting.
In an usual move, Hoyle selected both those amendments to be voted on, breaking with the precedent whereby one opposition party cannot alter another’s motion. Usually, only the government amendment would be selected.
More than 70 MPs have since signed a motion expressing no confidence in the Speaker after angry scenes in the Commons on Wednesday.
