Police chief tells pro-Israel group he imposed unprecedented restrictions on Gaza rally
London's Metropolitan Police chief, Mark Rowley, has said that his force imposed unprecedented restrictions on a major pro-Palestine rally in London on Saturday that led to 77 arrests.
According to estimates by the organisers, the rally drew over 100,000 people - two of whom have been charged with public order offences they deny.
Last November, the Met approved the organising coalition's proposed march from the BBC headquarters to Whitehall but reversed course after political pressure. Police said in early January that the route was too close to two synagogues.
Pro-Israel groups, chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, MPs and peers had reportedly urged Met commissioner Rowley to reroute the protest.
Last week, the police took the unusual step of announcing an alternative route for the march, beginning at Russell Square. However, the Met later backed down and agreed to a "static protest" at Whitehall.
The day after the rally, on Sunday, Rowley gave a speech at an event held by the pro-Israel Board of Deputies of British Jews, where he said that "the powers to condition protests are quite limited – we’ve used conditions on the protests more than we ever have done before in terms of times, constraints, routes".
"We have to take into account the Human Rights Act, that’s what the law says, and of course the rights of all communities, the rights of protesters and freedom of speech, etc," Rowley said.
The Board of Deputies supported Israel's war on Gaza and slammed the Labour government for imposing a partial arms embargo on Israel in September.
It was also one of the groups that reportedly urged the Met to ban the pro-Palestine march's original route.
Rowley told the audience that his team imposed "sharper and stronger conditions" on the organisers of the demonstration, saying the Met had "taken account of the punitive disruption on communities, particularly on the business communities in central London and on Jewish communities".
Rowley's impartiality questioned
The police chief also blasted Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a pro-Israel advocacy group, as well as the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), for allegedly ignoring "the reality of the law" and deploying "small peak political rhetoric".
CAA accused the Met of "mustering a show of strength only now that it appears that the war might be ending", having not banned pro-Palestine marches in previous months.
MAB, however, questioned Rowley's impartiality in light of the Met's engagement with pro-Israel groups.
In an open letter to Rowley, MAB said: "Your remarks celebrating the imposition of 'sharper and stronger conditions' on these protests - delivered to an audience aligned with one side of this issue - are deeply inappropriate... and raise questions about whether all communities can expect equal treatment under your leadership."
The Met has come under fire by several British politicians in the past few days for allegedly presenting a misleading account of the protest.
The Met accused demonstrators of breaking through a police cordon in Trafalgar Square on Saturday, which the protest's organisers strongly deny.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign's director, Ben Jamal, said on Monday, after being charged with public order offences: "It seems clear that the political intention was to create scenes of mass disorder which could be used to justify the Home Secretary intervening to ban all future marches.
"Despite this attempt, there were not scenes of mass disorder. This was due to the extraordinary and determined discipline of those who came to protest, even in the face of such provocation."
Many British Jews also hit back against claims that the march threatened Jewish communities.
Last week, nearly a thousand British Jews, including prominent legal and cultural figures and Holocaust survivors, signed an open letter urging the Met to reverse its ban.
The letter decried "an orchestrated attempt to portray the marches as a threat to those attending synagogues".
"As Jews, we are shocked at this brazen attempt to interfere with hard-won political freedoms by conjuring up an imaginary threat to Jewish freedom of worship," the letter said.