Protest for peace in Gaza to target Stephen Crabb's office

The protest will assemble on the Old Bridge in Haverfordwest at 2pm before marching through Bridge Street and up to Stephen Crabb’s constituency office on Upper Market Street where further speeches will be heard.

The demonstration will take place as part of coordinated local rallies around the UK this weekend following hundreds of such demonstrations since the war in Gaza began.

Recent national demonstrations have also attracted up to one million people at a time.

Organisers of Saturday’s protest, Stop The War Pembrokeshire and Solidarity with Palestine Pembrokeshire said: “The need to join the ever growing voices of opposition to Israel’s unfolding war crimes against Palestine is becoming more pressing by the day.”

They said that since October 7 more than 18,000 Palestinians have been killed and 50,000 injured in Israeli attacks, 20,000 of these have been children.

They added that most of northern Gaza has been reduced to rubble. More than 7,729 Palestinian children, 5,133 women and 296 Palestinian Health Workers have been killed while the UN Relief and Workers Agency reports that nearly 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced by the war, which has also seen 132 United Nations Staff members killed.

“As if this wasn’t tragedy enough, half of all Palestinians in Gaza are now starving and with extreme shortages of sanitary and medical supplies,” said a spokesperson for Stop The War Pembrokeshire and Solidarity with Palestine Pembrokeshire.

“This collective punishment of Palestinians within the open air prison which is Gaza, now shows most of the identifiable indicators globally recognised to signify an unfolding genocide.”

They added that the UK government was complicit in this and was actively supporting it in the form of military aid, while UK arms companies’ profits were also selling weaponry to Israel.

Saturday’s protests will aim to apply pressure on local members of parliament and the government to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and to urge Israel to lift the siege that has deprived the people of Gaza of essential resources such as medical supplies, food, electricity, and water.

“These actions by Israel are a clear violation of international law, and we demand accountability, justice and an immediate end to Israel’s genocide on Gaza.”

Adam Johannes, a spokesperson for Stop the War Coalition in Wales added: "We are protesting in support of the right of Palestinians to live freely in their own land rather than being subjected to military occupation, siege, refugee camps and exile.

“According to a YouGov poll, 76 per cent of the public favour an immediate ceasefire, but MPs overwhelmingly oppose calling for one. Welsh politics is now at the crossroads with only 5 out of Wales' 40 MPs supporting a ceasefire now"

Afia Ahmed, one of the protestors, emphasised, "We'll persist in our vigils and protests in Pembrokeshire until our voices are acknowledged. We urge our MP, who is meant to be our voice in Westminster, to advocate for what we demand – the ending of the Israeli occupation, the end to the decades long blockade of Gaza and the West Bank and the freedom of the Palestinian people."

Nine-year-old Aklimah Ahmed passionately expressed, "I just want Israel to stop killing children! You can't justify it by saying terrorists hide in schools with children. You would not bomb a school in Israel if a member of Hamas was in there. You would not bomb a hospital in Israel if a few people from Hamas were hiding underneath it. So why do you think you can kill thousands of people in Gaza to try to get to a very few people?

"It doesn’t make any sense and it’s not fair! If I understand this as a nine-year-old kid then why doesn’t my MP get it and why doesn’t my Prime Minister understand?”

Weekly vigils have been taking place in Haverfordwest at 7.00pm every Friday since the attacks on Gaza began and are expected to continue until calls for a ceasefire are answered.

All details of Saturday's demonstration can be found at the Facebook event linked above.