Thousands of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel demonstrators marched through central London to the United States embassy on Saturday to protest against US President Donald Trump’s proposal that the US “take over” Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Waving Palestinian flags and placards saying “Hands off Gaza,” several thousand people walked from Whitehall in Westminster over the River Thames to the embassy in Nine Elms, chanting, among other slogans, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” according to the Daily Mail.

Among those in attendance was former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was seen at the front of a bloc marching under a banner demanding to “stop arming Israel.”

Several attendees could be seen holding signs with inflammatory language or symbols emblazoned on them, including a man identified as 69-year-old John Hamilton, who the Daily Mail reported was carrying a placard featuring two swastikas that he claimed were a way to “draw comparisons between the Zionists and the Nazis.”

The sign was inside an evidence bag, to draw attention to an identical sign that had been taken from him when he was arrested during a November 2023 protest.

Earlier this month, Trump stunned the world when he suggested the US could redevelop the war-torn Gaza Strip into a prime real estate location as a means of rebuilding it.

His proposal envisages resettling Palestinians elsewhere, chiefly in Jordan and Egypt, apparently with no plan for them ever to return, despite other members of his administration and Israel insisting it would be a temporary measure.

Other Western leaders and the Arab world have widely condemned the idea.

Protesters held banners that read, “Stand up to Trump” and “Mr Trump, Canada is not your 51st state. Gaza is not your 52nd.”

“I think it’s completely immoral and illegal and also impractical and absurd,” 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos told AFP.

“You simply cannot deport two million people, especially that the surrounding countries already said that they wouldn’t take them, not out of the goodness of their heart but because it would destabilize those countries,” he said.

“So it’s not going to happen but it does a lot of damage simply stating that as an endgame,” he added.

The march, organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), was the 24th major pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protest in Britain’s capital since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 assault on Israel.

The assault — in which thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault — sparked immediate demonstrations worldwide, even prior to Israel’s response.

The PSC has faced heavy backlash in recent weeks, after newly obtained information from the Metropolitan Police Service showed that the group first filed a request to hold an anti-Israel protest shortly after noon on October 7, some eight hours after Hamas breached the Israel-Gaza border in multiple places, invaded Israel and began its slaughter.

At the time that the request was filed, the massacre was ongoing and the IDF was scrambling to regain control of the southern communities invaded by Hamas. Israel was still far from fully understanding the scale of the unfolding disaster.

A heavy police presence was deployed as officers kept protesters away from a counter-march led by the “Stop the Hate” group, founded post-October 7 to respond to the frequent anti-Israel marches.

The Telegraph reported that protestors from the main demonstration shouted, among other things, “Zionist pig,” and “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Mohammad will return” — an Arabic chant referring to an ancient battle between Muslims and Jews — at the pro-Israel counterprotestors.

Stop the Hate also shared a series of signs on social media that it found particularly egregious, including a map labeled “Palestine” with the borders of the entire State of Israel, several comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany and the war in Gaza to the Holocaust, and a sign alleging that both major parties in the UK and the US are “owned by Israel.”

“Antisemitic tropes were popular at today’s PSC protest. Placards about Jewish power are never called out by the organisers,” the group said on X.