The head of the Met Police has defended his officers after they separated two pro-Israeli protesters from a Palestine Action demonstration and placed them on a London bus during a heated incident.
Tensions rose at the protest near Trafalgar Square as two counter-protesters unveiled Israeli flags among hundreds of pro-Palestine demonstrators on Monday, Met Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said.
Footage shared with The Telegraph shows police warning the pro-Israeli counter-protesters that waving the flag could be a breach of the peace.
The pair had accused the Met of “two-tier justice” over the actions of its officers and the crowd was seen shouting “Zionist scum” at the protesters after they were moved onto the bus.
But speaking on LBC, Sir Mark accused the protesters of being “disingenuous” about the Met’s approach to the incident.
The police chief explained: “They chose to walk into the middle of the Palestine Action protest and then reveal the Israeli flags.
“If you were a Spurs fan and you walked into a walked into the middle of a bunch of Arsenal fans on a heated local derby and then started waving Spurs flags, the police would hoick you out of there and say ‘don’t be so damn stupid you’re going to start a fight’ and then take them out for their own protection.
“It’s no different to that whatsoever. It’s not about two-tier policing, if they wanted to protest on the other side of the road and express their views, the officers would have facilitated that.
“If you want to walk into the middle of something and try to create an incident, then of course we are going to try and protect you from yourselves and stop an incident from growing.
“And we would do exactly the same in the opposite. If you had a Pro-Israel protest going on, and a couple of Palestinian supporters walked into it and waved flags, we would hoick them out as well.”
Sir Mark also told LBC that “officers have acted with great common sense and pragmatism” before explaining that the Met was not going to allow “one side to walk into the middle of the other to try and spark an incident”.
Tensions had been high at the protest, with hundreds of Palestine Action supporters clashing with police.
Sir Mark said there had been 13 arrests at the protest, six for assaults on police officers.
He added that four officers had been injured, but none seriously, during the demonstration.
The arrests included four people who refused to disperse from the protest at the imposed 3pm cut-off and were arrested for breaching Public Order Act conditions.
News broke during the protest that the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper drafted a proscription order that would be laid before Parliament on June 30.
If passed, the order would make it illegal to be a member of, or invite support for, Palestine Action — a group that uses direct action tactics to disrupt the arms industry in Britain amid the conflict in Gaza.
It comes a week after two Palestine Action members broke into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and damaged two Voyager planes.
Sir Mark repeated his view that Palestine Action are an “organised extremist criminal group” to LBC, having previously said he was “shocked and frustrated” that Monday’s gathering had gone ahead.
Meanwhile, Palestine Action called the proposed ban “unhinged” and has accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of “rank hypocrisy”.
They claim that as a lawyer, Sir Keir defended activists who broke into RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire in 2003 to stop United States bombers heading to Iraq.
Meanwhile, solicitors for the group claim that the terrorism proscription was “unlawful, dangerous and ill thought out”.
But in her statement, Ms Cooper said: “The UK’s defence enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
Palestine Action would to join 81 other organisations in being effectively banned in the UK, including the likes of Hamas, the far-right National Action and the Russian Wagner Group.
Being a member of Palestine Action is set carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
Israel's response to the massacre of October 7, 2023 has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health officials, and destroyed much of the coastal territory.
