PROTESTS for Palestine once again took place across Britain and internationally at the weekend as Israel’s merciless attacks on the people of Gaza continued.

In London, 100,000 marched to Parliament Square on Saturday calling for a ceasefire, while the Metropolitan Police said it arrested 13 protesters mostly for carrying “offensive” placards.

At the capital’s protest Londoner Kelly Hunter, 60, said she felt helpless watching the news.

“I have come on every single one,” she said.

“I feel helpless, I can’t sleep at night. I am watching this genocide. I will do everything I can in my power to march against it.”

On Friday the US vetoed a call for a ceasefire made by the UN at an emergency meeting of the UN security council, while Britain abstained. 

The other 13 member states supported the ceasefire call.

In Manchester, where more than a dozen groups are united under the banner Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine, more than 3,000 took to the streets. 

They shut down a branch of Barclays and occupied a Puma store in protest against the sportswear firm’s sponsorship of the Israeli Football Association.

John Nicholson of the group said: “Every moment in Gaza is worse than the one before.

“This is the result of the British government and other western establishments green-lighting an attempt to annihilate Gaza.

“Companies right here on the streets of Manchester are actively reaping profits from Israeli colonisation, further tainting their money with Palestinian blood.

“With every bomb dropped these companies make profits. It is our duty to prevent them from doing so,” he said. “Any complicity with Israeli war crimes will not be tolerated on our streets.”

Labour appeared to be softening its slavish support for Israel and the US by calling for action against Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, and criticising the “intolerable” death toll in Gaza.

Settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have continued throughout Israel’s murderous operations in Gaza.

Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy called on the government to introduce travel bans on Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians.

He also called for more government support for humanitarian organisations supporting Palestinians.

Writing in the Observer, he said that “too often, Israeli authorities have turned a blind eye to settler violence.”