Students at Queen Mary University (QMUL) in East London are staging a pro-Palestine sit-in. Protestors have pitched tents at the university, and chants of “Queen Mary shame shame” can be heard echoing out.
There are also students with placards reading “hands of Rafah”, a reference to the southernmost point in Gaza, which shares a border with Egypt. According to The Guardian, Between 360,000 and 500,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah in the past week after Israeli warnings to evacuate eastern and central neighbourhoods before new assaults.
Conditions there are increasingly desperate, with people sheltering in makeshift camps and reportedly overcrowded apartment buildings. Many say they have been displaced multiple times amid intense Israeli airstrikes and ground operations, as well as the continued blockade.
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The May 13 sit-in is another demonstration of solidarity with the victims of the ongoing crisis – a place which Human Rights Watch calls an ‘open-air prison’. In January, charity Oxfam reported that Israel kills around 250 Palestinians every day.
According to the charity, that’s a daily death rate higher than any other 21st-century conflict. Around 13,000 children have died at the hands of Israel since October 7 last year, reported Reuters in March. They added that Israel denies genocide charges, saying it is acting in self-defence after the October 7 attack on Israwl from Hamas.
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