Hundreds gather at Israeli consulate in solidarity with Palestinian 'day of rage'
Protesters in Barcelona call for an end to hostilities that have left over 200 dead
Several hundred people gathered in front of the Israeli consulate in Barcelona on Tuesday evening to show their support for the Palestinian "day of rage."
On May 18, Palestinians in both the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel held a general strike in response to the ongoing Israeli airstrikes as well as a legal battle concerning the eviction of Muslim families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
Demonstrators in the Catalan capital called for an end to hostilities, which have left over 200 dead since they began over a week ago. The victims of this latest conflict are overwhelmingly Palestinian.
Civil society organizations and unions such as Ca la Dona, #RegularizacionYa, IAC, or Joventut Obrera Cristiana as well as the ERC youths, CUP, and Barcelona En Comú political groups backed the protest.
Lafede.cat manisfesto
This protest comes a day after Lafede.cat, a federation of over a hundred Catalan NGOs, published a manifesto calling for the Catalan government to cut its ties to the Israeli security sector.
"It is time to stop being complicit with the occupation and apartheid of the Palestinian people," the organization's president, Luca Gervasoni Vila, told Catalan News.
"Regarding the Barcelona council, we ask them to end the twinning between Barcelona, Gaza, and Tel Aviv that was signed back in 1998 after the Oslo peace process," he said. "We understand it is just a symbolic move but it is an extremely important symbolic move."
According to Lafede.cat's manifesto, the recent developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict must be understood within the context of "the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians that Israel has been carrying out for the past 70 years," actions the organization maintains are "tantamount to the crime of apartheid."
Candles for Palestine
The Comunitat Palestina Catalunya, a group of Palestinian human rights activists who live in Catalonia, is calling on people to light a candle in front of their local council on Wednesday at 9 pm and to share a photo of it on social media with the hashtag #SomPalestina ('We are Palestine').