On Saturday morning, an unidentified barefoot man climbed Big Ben’s Elizabeth Tower at London’s Palace of Westminster, remaining perched on a ledge for sixteen hours, waving a Palestinian flag in protest. His cries of “Free Palestine” were echoed by the crowds of onlookers. The area around Westminster Bridge was closed at the start of the incident, and parliamentary tours were canceled. As negotiators tried to convince him to descend, he threatened to ascend higher.
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After hours of prolonged negotiations, authorities convinced the man to climb aboard a firetruck lift and return to Earth. The affected roads were reopened only after the man descended and was arrested.
JUST IN: Big Ben protestor climbs down after 17 hours. The activist, waving a Palestinian flag and demanding justice for Filton18, left the ledge at midnight. pic.twitter.com/ksnw7pRNED
— Eye On News (@EyeOnNews24) March 9, 2025
It may be that waving a Palestinian flag from Big Ben had nationalist intentions. In February 2021, Daniel Greenfield reported on a claim made on the official news website of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah faction (the party of President Mahmoud Abbas) contended that what’s today known as London’s Big Ben was originally a clock tower positioned at Hebron Gate (more commonly known as Jaffa Gate) in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The claim is not considered credible as the Hebron Gate clock tower was completed in 1909, when Jerusalem was still under Ottoman rule. Big Ben was constructed 50 years earlier, completed in 1859. The Jerusalem clocktower was constructed in 1900 after Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany gifted a batch of clocks to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the last real sultan of the empire, but looked anachronistic and out of place. The clocktower was disassembled and moved to a different location in Jerusalem.
The story is also not credible as Big Ben is 316 feet tall, while the Jerusalem clock tower was only 42 feet tall. Some Palestinian “historians” claim that only the clock mechanism from the Jerusalem clocktower was used for Big Ben.
