THIS weekend’s national demonstration for an end to genocide in Gaza speaks for a majority of British people.

It should be huge. For 19 months, national marches for Palestine have brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets.

Despite that the genocide continues, the toll of Palestinians killed by Israel’s merciless bombardment of homes and hospitals, medics and journalists, women and children climbing every day.

There is no room for “demo fatigue” in the face of such horror. Britain is involved in this. Not only can we change that, doing so would seriously inconvenience an Israeli regime which is becoming increasingly isolated.

As a case before the High Court contends, Britain is complicit in war crimes through its continued supply of parts for the F-35 jets bombing Gaza.

The RAF has flown hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza since the invasion began. We can be sure it shares its findings with the Israeli military despite evidence it is violating international law.

Israel is supplied via the RAF’s Akrotiri base on Cyprus, and there is reason to believe the Israeli military has used the base itself. This very week, Labour MP Kim Johnson sought to ask about Israel’s use of Akrotiri and was informed that the government had prohibited questions on the subject.

So ministers’ hand-wringing over Israeli atrocities is an exercise in deceit. We are helping to commit those atrocities. And our assistance is being ramped up: as Scottish newspaper The National revealed today, Labour licensed exports of more military equipment to Israel in the last three months of 2024 than Tory governments did in the three years 2020-23.

Most British people oppose this. Very likely, most Labour MPs are not happy about it. Keir Starmer’s swift repression of any dissent has, so far, kept most of the parliamentary party quiet.

But the pro-Israel front is crumbling: condemnation of the war now sounds from all sides of the House. Labour’s dire local election results are also concentrating MPs’ minds. The costs of loyalty to the government line may soon outweigh the costs of rebellion. So we must keep up the pressure.

A huge march this weekend also asserts our own right to march, one the mass arrests at the January demo and the charges levelled at protest leaders since are designed to suppress. The last Tory government initially considered suppression of the peace movement. The sheer size of the demos meant it had to back down. Safety in numbers remains our best defence.

Israel’s brutality has left it increasingly isolated. Ireland, Norway and Spain have recognised a Palestinian state since the war began; France has committed to do so.

Britain must be dragged into that growing consensus that the occupation must end, and Palestinians be granted the independent state they were promised when their land was partitioned by foreign powers.

Nor can Israel continue its aggression without its Western allies.

The loss of British support would hurt Israel. Not so much as the loss of that of the United States, of course.

But ties between Netanyahu and President Trump are cooling: the Israeli leader was enraged by the deal Trump struck with the Houthis, and Israeli media are querying why their country has been left out of Trump’s Middle East tour. US policy is unpredictable, but continued support for Israel’s maximal war aims is uncertain, and Britain joining the international clamour for a halt could only help.

An end to this war is possible. A future for Palestine is achievable, and the world having seen Israeli leaders in their true colours, bragging of their expansionist agenda and ethnic cleansing plans, could cut through the decades of lip service paid to an independent Palestine by states continuing to support colonisation and settlement.

Things can be different: but only if our movement can emulate in some small degree the heroic perseverance of the Palestinians themselves, and keep marching.