Thousands gather in Washington DC in protests for Gaza ceasefire Thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Washington DC on Saturday in calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed nearly 24,000 Palestinians since 7 October. Pictures posted online showed demonstrators holding various signs including some saying “Stop funding apartheid now” and “Free Palestine”. One picture showed demonstrators commuting by bus from Boston to Washington DC to attend the pro-ceasefire rallies. Another video showed demonstrators holding a massive Palestinian flag. Osama Abu Irshaid, executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, also addressed the crowd in Washington DC, calling for further solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza while also condemning American politicians including Joe Biden, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. Abu Irshaid said: “We are proud of who we are. We are proud of what we stand for and we are proud of who we stand for and who we stand against. Let the deaf hear, let the blind see that we are here in the tens of thousands, from all over America… History will celebrate you. History will register your names. History will register the victory of Gaza. And history will disregard Genocide Joe, Hakeem Jeffries, [Chuck] Schumer and the rest of the gang, the corrupt gang… My dear brothers and sisters, this is not one activity for Palestine… It didn’t start today. It’s not going to end tomorrow. We have to continue this walk. We are entering a new era in America, an era for a free Palestine.” Muslim civil rights activist Imam Omar Suleiman also spoke at the pro-Palestine rally in Washington DC, saying: “I want you to appreciate that in this country, this isn’t our first protest. We have taken to the streets in the name of one victim of state violence for months at a time. If we were to take to the streets for every single casualty and every single person that is under the rubble for the last three months, it would take us a hundred years to honor each and every single one of those victims. And if we were to collectively take to the streets for the rest of our lives for just one of the people on these posters, for just one Wael El Dahdouh, it would be worth it. They ask us where our Nelson Mandelas are. We say that our Mandelas are suing criminals at The Hague right now for genocide. We say that our Mandelas are the children that have resisted over seven decades of occupation, standing in front of Israeli tanks. We say that our Mandelas are the Wael El Dahdouhs and the Motazes [Azaiza] of the world who continue to hold up cameras to your genocide, unintimidated.” Cornel West has just been addressing the protest in Washington and speaking of Martin Luther King Jr, while embracing with his speech his “Palestinian brothers and sisters” in the massive crowd and predicting a free Palestine “is going to happen.” The former Harvard and Princeton professor is running in this year’s presidential election as an independent candidate. “Martin Luther King Jr would have been 95 years old on Monday,” he said. “MLK said ‘I would rather be dead than afraid…we need courage’,” he said to huge cheers. “We need love and freedom and freedom in love,” he said. “When I talk about free Palestine, it’s going to happen. I may not see it for myself but I will have done everything I can with every bone in my body [to make it happen],” said the 70-year-old. He finished with: “We want equality, we want equality, we want equality.” Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdour, who works for Al Jazeera and has lost multiple members of his immediate family in Gaza since October, while also recently being wounded himself, has addressed the protest in Washington via a video feed from the Middle East. He spoke up about the dire conditions in which Palestinians are struggling to exist in Gaza while under Israeli bombardment. “The people are paying an exorbitant price, and are living a disastrous life,” he told the crowds in Washington. “People do not have sustenance, food or drink, a place to sleep, a bathroom, and what is necessary for a life, not for a decent life, rather what is basically necessary to maintain life,” he said. He added: “Throughout such terrible circumstances, such hardship, it is true that the Gaza Strip pays a terrible price.” He said that 112 journalists and photographers had been killed in the three months of the conflict. “Throughout all of this hurt, all of this pain, all of this cost... We have not ceased to persist. We guarantee you that we will persist in carrying this message,” he said. Here are some images coming through the newswires from Washington DC, where thousands of demonstrators are calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza: In another video posted online, a demonstrator in Washington DC can be seen adding a gallon of fake blood to a tank to mark the lives of Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes. A sign in front of the tank reads “Gaza blood is flowing – we will add a gallon of blood every 15 minutes to honor the 247 lives killed today.” Since 7 October, Israeli forces have killed nearly 24,000 Palestinians across Gaza, leaving nearly 2 million survivors displaced across the strip amid shortages in food, water, fuel and medical supplies. Thousands gather in Washington DC in protests for Gaza ceasefire Thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Washington DC on Saturday in calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed nearly 24,000 Palestinians since 7 October. Pictures posted online showed demonstrators holding various signs including some saying “Stop funding apartheid now” and “Free Palestine”. One picture showed demonstrators commuting by bus from Boston to Washington DC to attend the pro-ceasefire rallies. Another video showed demonstrators holding a massive Palestinian flag. A Hamas official thanked Qatar on Saturday for sending medicine to Gaza “in light of the many risks that threaten the lives of Palestinians”, Reuters reports. Speaking at a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon-based Hamas leader Osama Hamdan said: “Some medicine will be used to treat Israeli prisoners.” On Friday, Israel announced that it had reached an arrangement with Qatar that will allow medicine to be delivered to hostages currently held by Hamas in Gaza. Since 7 October, nearly 2 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes by Israeli strikes, leaving them with severe shortages in food, water, fuel and medical supplies. US and UK attacks on Yemen are fueling regional tensions amid Israel’s deadly war in Gaza, which has already killed more than 23,000 Palestinians. The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reports: Last summer, as Washington tried quietly to coax Saudi Arabia towards the grand bargain of normalisation of its relations with Israel, diplomats in Riyadh were much more focused on securing a different peace deal on its southern borders with one of the most successful insurgencies of ­modern times – the one led by the Houthi rebels of Yemen, also known as Ansar Allah, the supporters of God. With an informal ceasefire holding inside Yemen, and after months of private talks mainly mediated in Oman, on 14 September a Houthi ­delegation flew to Riyadh, where they met Prince Khalid bin Salman, the defence minister and brother of the crown prince. Major differences remained to be settled, but it seemed as if, after decades of various forms of fighting, peace was to come to the country, and largely on the terms dictated by a group that did not really exist as a political force inside Yemen until the early 2000s. Saudi Arabia was finally going to cut its losses on the disastrous offensive it launched in 2015 to push back the Houthis. Yet 23 days after the Riyadh meeting, Hamas broke through the border with Israel, massacring Israelis and sparking a chain of events that this week left Yemen exposed to a two-day attack mounted from US and British submarines and warships on the Red Sea. The first lady of Namibia, Monica Geingos, has spoken out against Germany’s defense of Israel in its case against South Africa’s genocide at the International Court of Justice. In a statement on X, Geingos cited the Herero-Nama genocide, which was waged by German forces from 1904 to 1908 and killed between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama in Namibia (then known colonially as German South West Africa). Geingos said: The build up to the Herero-Nama genocide in Namibia, perpetrated by Germany started on 12 January 1904. The absurdity of Germany, on 12 January 2024, rejecting genocide charges against Israel and warning about the ‘political instrumentalisation of the charge’ is not lost on us.