When the Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised its first protest against Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, days after Hamas’ deadly terror attacks on 7 October 2023, leaders expected the conflict to be over within weeks.
“I remember saying to my staff ‘we are probably going to need to be responding to this through marches until potentially Christmas’,” recalls director Ben Jamal. “I didn’t see beyond that.”
His calculations were based on previous conflicts in the Gaza Strip. In 2021’s crisis, Israeli bombing and Hamas rocket fire lasted for 11 days, while the 2014 war continued for seven weeks, and 2012 saw eight days of bloodshed before a ceasefire was reached.
But after a year, the current war shows no sign of stopping and is instead spreading to Lebanon and threatening to escalate further following Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel.
Protests in Britain look set to expand in response: the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) march on 5 October in London incorporated the slogans “hands off Lebanon” and “no Middle East war”. It was attended by tens of thousands of people.
The Metropolitan police said it appeared to have a higher turnout than recent demonstrations demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, which have become smaller and less frequent since a peak last November.
But with thousands of people still attending PSC marches roughly every three weeks, both the campaign group and Scotland Yard agree that it is the biggest protest movement seen in recent British history – outstripping the historic 2010 student protests and 2003 anti-Iraq war demonstrations.
The Met assistant commissioner Matt Twist says the past year has been “the busiest period in terms of protests that we’ve ever had”, with major demonstrations “happening at a much higher tempo than we’ve ever seen before”.
“As well as the [pro-Palestinian] marches, we now see counter protests, and then we’ve had the growth in what I would call cultural nationalists, or some people characterise as the right wing, which have also been presenting an additional resourcing demand,” he adds.
“We’re concerned about the widening and deepening of the conflict and what the implications are for this country, and for London in particular, across a range of issues. Our planning assumption is that these protests will continue.”
The Met has organised its response to all protests related to the Israel-Gaza war under the codename “Operation Brocks”, which has so far cost £46.8m and involved 60,000 shifts by local officers and 9,600 by those loaned from forces outside London.
The bulk of resources have gone into the 20 national marches so far called by the PSC, although numerous smaller demonstrations have taken place across London, organised by a range of groups and figures supporting opposing sides in the conflict.
“The cost has been enormous,” Twist says. “The financial cost is one thing, but the opportunity cost for London is another, because those officers are pulled from local policing in the main – so it means they’re not doing other things.”
Police have counted more than 2,600 protests nationally linked to the Israel-Gaza war, and the National Police Chiefs’ Council called its response “one of the longest and most resource-intensive policing operations in recent history”.
In London, 404 arrests had been made at protests by the end of June but only 14% had resulted in a charge, analysis by the Observer shows, with 45% of cases remaining under investigation, while over a third resulted in no further action.
The largest number of arrests made in a single day was on 11 November 2023, when disorder broke out among far-right protesters claiming to protect war memorials against a regular PSC protest that fell on Armistice Day.
The majority of crimes recorded by police under Operation Brocks as a whole have been breach of the peace and public order offences, but there have also been numerous alleged assaults on officers and seven arrests on suspicion of inviting support for a terrorist group.
In February, two women were convicted of terror offences for wearing images of Hamas militants entering Israel on paragliders on 7 October during the PSC protest a week later.
By the end of June, more than 50 arrests had also been made for hate crimes at protests, including religiously aggravated public order offences and stirring up racial hatred.
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Suella Braverman, then the Home Secretary, characterised the PSC’s protests as “hate marches” and was sacked by Rishi Sunak after writing an article accusing the Met of applying a “double standard”, claiming right-wing protesters were “rightly met with a stern response”, while “pro-Palestinian mobs” were “largely ignored”.
Twist rejects claims of two-tier policing as “nonsense”, adding: “It’s become a useful soundbite for those who seek to criticise and undermine without adding constructively to the debate. We police without fear or favour, according to the law as it is – not as people might wish it to be.”
He says the legal threshold for banning marches, which is serious disorder, has never been met and the Met is not pushing for any new laws or increased powers.
But he adds that while “the overwhelming majority of people who attend [PSC protests] do so peacefully and in a good-natured way, it is also true to say that the marches place the Jewish community in fear”.
“We have seen an unusually high incidence of offences linked to the Terrorism Act, in terms of supporting a proscribed organisation, and we have made arrests at almost every march linked to racial or religious hatred,” Twist says.
Jamal accuses critics of disproportionate focus on a “handful of placards” and “unacceptable” chants by small groups of people in thousands-strong crowds.
“The number of people being arrested on these demonstrations is very, very low,” he adds.
“With the individuals, of course we look at if we are seeing any patterns or something problematic. But what we get is a handful of things that happen that do not speak to the vast majority.”
The PSC has rejected criticism of contested slogans, such as “from the river to the sea”, and denies that its marches are making the Jewish community less safe.
“Every single march we’ve had hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Jewish people marching in an organised Jewish block to say ‘we do not agree with what the state of Israel is doing’,” Jamal says. “They have always been warmly welcomed.”
But Jewish safety charity the Community Security Trust, which has been monitoring an increase in antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, believes the number of arrests for hate crimes and terror offences indicate a “problematic pattern of behaviour”.
Dave Rich, the charity’s director of policy, says protests have been causing central London synagogues to cancel events and made Jewish people fear visiting the capital.
“If [Jewish] people want to go on these marches that’s fine, but the vast majority of Jewish people don’t fancy coming out of a synagogue and watch 10,000 people marching past calling Israel genocidal baby-killers,” he adds.
The charity is now concerned that as the conflict continues, protests could “spin off into smaller, hardline, direct action” that would be harder for police to control and “has more violent potential”.
While the CST has been advocating for greater restrictions on the timing and route of PSC demonstrations, Jamal says police have been imposing “torturous” conditions under the Public Order Act.
Meanwhile, Twist believes police are “getting it about right” to minimise disruption and balance competing rights.
“One side will say we’re doing too much, and the other side might say we’re not doing enough,” he adds. “It’s a difficult balance and it’s hotly contested. The protest picture has become more febrile, the world seems to be more polarised.”