Tag: labour party

Settlements are building Palestine out of existence – Hugh Lanning

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By Hugh Lanning, Labour & Palestine

Settlements are weapons, not homes. The word settlement sounds innocuous, it conjures up images of wagons bravely travelling across prairies to build homes on wild, open, uninhabited grasslands. This vision is a colonial myth that hides the reality of the brutal genocide of the native Americans.

The examples of America, Australia and elsewhere of the ruthless elimination of indigenous peoples by settlers are being directly mirrored by Israel’s use of settlements to colonise Palestine. The same overwhelming firepower is being used, backed by the ‘official’ armed forces, with the IDF playing the role of the cavalry – not coming to the rescue of the rightful owners of the land, but in league with and indistinguishable from the settlers. Now beholden to the settler movement, Israel’s Government arms, defends and supports the increasingly fascistic settlers on an ever upward curve of violence and displacement of Palestinians from their land and homes.

The media often caveats the description of settlements with phrases like “claimed by Palestinians” to be illegal. But international law is very clear, the Geneva convention sets out that it is a war crime for an occupying force to move its civilian population to settle on the territory it occupies, as it crosses the line from occupying temporarily to taking possession of another’s land permanently.

This is not the accidental by-product of Israel’s settlement strategy. It is its sole purpose. Israel has no objective need of the land, there is enough space for all its population to be housed within the internationally recognised 1948 borders. They are not building homes for people who need them, it is a messianic crusade based on their Zionist belief that Israel has a divine mandate to take all the land of historic Palestine to build a ‘greater Israel’.

Supported, not least by millions of dollars and volunteers from Christian evangelist churches, the world continues to trade with these settlements. Western banks supply financial support; western companies help build them and western companies buy and sell goods with them.

The Oslo agreement in 1993 said there would be a freeze on settlement building. Like most of the other parts of the agreement it has been consistently ignored by Israel with the numbers growing from a figure in the thousands to approaching a million, government subsidised, literally weaponised settlers.

The settlements are not small – they are built on the commanding heights of the West Bank, controlling the landscape, stealing the water and the aquifers. There is a huge infrastructure being built to sustain them. Settler only roads link them to Israel, the apartheid wall is built to protect them and surround and isolate Palestinian villages.

They are built to divide up the West Bank – so it can be easily sealed off, with power and water on tap. Whilst Palestinians have to wait for rain and the water-truck to arrive, nearby settlers luxuriate around their swimming pools. The settlements are deliberately built to destroy Palestinian villages and obliterate their history.

Over the years the EU, the UK government and supermarkets have made token efforts to label or not stock overt settlement goods. But most are indistinguishable from other Israeli produce. Whilst the UK has sanctioned a few settler leaders, the economic lifeline of trade still flows freely sustaining these settler colonial enterprises whilst still hypocritically describing them as illegal.

As the Irish government is showing, banning all such trade by law would be an easy concrete action the Labour Government could take. Not just the goods but following the money too. The US is threatening the ICC with economic sanctions; it is way beyond time for the UK to adopt similar targeted sanctions against all Israeli trade involved in supporting breaches of international law. There is little or no Israeli trade or company that is not complicit. The genocide in Gaza, and the settler violence, are all taking place in plain sight. The ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians together with the ever-accelerating growth of settlement construction is building Palestine out of existence.

Gaza is the new target for settlement. A small number of settlers in Gaza were removed by Israel in 2005. Now neo-Zionists are queueing up on the borders plotting and planning establishing settlements along the Gaza coast. The role of settlements could not be more transparent – physically destroy Palestinian homes and infrastructure, drive out the people and move in the settlers.

In Gaza we have witnessed the destruction of hospitals, schools, churches, homes, agricultural land, markets and warehouses, water and utilities. The same processes are going on at an ever-increasing pace in East Jerusalem and across the West Bank.

Israel is a war economy, dependent on US and Western financial support and military aid to keep it surviving. With unemployment growing and its economy struggling, it is vulnerable as never before to global pressure to make it comply with international law. Labour is already on the wrong side of history for its complicity in the unfolding genocide, for which it must surely be held accountable legally.

It has already been held accountable by millions of voters who would normally have voted for them. Palestine will remain a litmus test issue at the next election. Starmer and Lammy say they believe in a two-state solution. Settlements are being used as a weapon of destruction to make impossible any such solution. They are now occupied by 10% of Israel’s population, being used as a Trojan Horse to steal Palestinian land. Labour should not just be calling for an end to settlement building but also making clear that any peace must involve their decolonisation. This means the return of settlers back to live within ‘48 borders, the destruction or handing over of the settlement buildings and tearing down the wall that protects them – brick by brick.

A real ceasefire and the end of the blockade, to stop the carnage and starvation in Gaza, are the most immediate needs, but strategically the settlements must go if there is to be any chance of peace.

  • Hugh Lanning is an officer of Labour and Palestine, former Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and former Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union.
  • You can follow Labour and Palestine on Facebook and Twitter/X.

Model motion for Labour Party conference 2024: Uphold international law for Palestinians

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Model contemporary motion for Labour Party conference: Uphold international law for Palestinians

Conference notes:

  • On July 12, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, said “Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse in Gaza… civilians are being pushed into ever deeper circles of hell.”
  • On 19 July, the International Court of Justice ruled Israel to be unlawfully occupying Palestinian land in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. It demanded Israel withdraws immediately, dismantles illegal settlements and pay reparations. It confirmed Israel is guilty of violating Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid. 
  • The ICJ’s January finding that South Africa’s claims concerning the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide – and related prohibited acts identified in the Genocide Convention – are plausible.

Conference welcomes the decisions of the Labour government to restore UNRWA funding and abandon Tory attempts to block the International Criminal Court from holding Israeli leaders accountable for crimes against Palestinians.

Conference believes Britain has a moral and legal obligation not to assist violations of international law. We must commit to the application of international law, including abiding by rulings and judgements of the ICJ and ICC.

Conference believes the new Government should:

  • Support an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
  • Impose a full arms embargo until Israel complies with international law.
  • End trade with illegal settlements and all other trade that aids or assists Israel in maintaining its illegal occupation.
  • This motion is being circulated jointly by Labour & Palestine and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
  • Rules and deadlines for Contemporary Motions for 2024 can be found at https://labour.org.uk/annual-conference/information-for-delegates/ If you wish to submit a motion on behalf of your organisation please do this before 5pm, Thursday 12 September.

Palestine: For a sustainable, just & lasting peace – Kim Johnson MP

Below is the text of the speech Kim Johnson MP was due to give at Labour & Palestine’s event on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, which was unfortunately curtailed due to Parliamentary business.

Thanks chair, I am pleased to speak today on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people

I want to start by reiterating my condemnation for the atrocities carried out by Hamas on October 7th and the collective punishment that has been imposed on Gaza in the weeks since. The loss of civilian life is abhorrent, and in times such as these it’s vital that we remember our shared humanity and that we come together to address the root cause of this tragic cycle of violence: the occupation of Palestine.

This is a time of unspeakable tragedy for the Palestinian people and for humanity.

The harrowing images, videos and reports of the catastrophe being waged on Gaza are utterly heart breaking. The numbers of Palestinians displaced and dead now far outstrip those of the 1948 Nakba.

It is an outrage that the international community has turned its back on Gaza and permitted this to happen in plain sight. The complete disregard for Palestinian life in the defence of Western interests should chill us to the bone.

There is no justification for the collective punishment being imposed on Palestinians in the occupied territories.

This latest surge in violence, aerial bombardment of the most densely populated, open air prison on earth, has created a level of suffering that was previously unimaginable.

A tortuous ban on essentials entering the strip, including water, food, medical aid and fuel.

The siege of hospitals, where premature babies in intensive care units were starved of oxygen until they could no longer survive.

Pregnant women giving birth without pain relief or access to proper medical care, estimated 160 babies delivered every day.

Accusations of the use of white phosphorous.

International aid workers, medics, journalists all killed in the line of duty.

Over 5000 children murdered in the most distressing ways possible, entire families wiped out – and the western world watched this play out on our TV screens every night, and still refused to call for a ceasefire, excusing Israel for these atrocities, as a right to defend themselves.

No one can plead ignorance to these atrocities committed by Israel in the name of self-defence, not least our own political leaders who even now are refusing to call for a permanent ceasefire.

In the harrowing words of UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres, Gaza is a ‘graveyard for children.’

And let us not forget the West Bank, where Israeli forces and settlers have killed more Palestinians since 7 October than the whole of last year, the temporary truce in Gaza will not bring an end to this escalating violence and expansion.

As the fragile ‘pauses’ continue to hold, the international movement for a just peace must not fall into complacency. Just because the bombs have stopped falling and the humanitarian operation has begun does not mean the danger has passed. We are witnessing the biggest forced displacement of Palestinians since the Nakba, with indications that Israel intends to occupy northern Gaza and push the Palestinians into the Sinai.

Israel is the only country in the world that systematically detains, interrogates and prosecutes children as young as 12 in military courts and accepts confessions obtained by coercion. It’s just one part of a broad unequal legal frame that Israel applies across historic Palestine, particularly since the 2018 Nation State Law and Trump’s Deal of the Century.

Action must be taken to put an end to the decades long systematic violation of Palestinian rights, including the state-sanctioned settler expansions and violence, the military occupation of the West Bank, and the siege of Gaza that has turned the strip into the world’s largest open-air prison. Failure will prolong cycles of violent outbursts, caused by the underlying day-to-day violence and humiliation of the occupation.

Impunity breeds extremism. Governments in the West, including our own, have for years given Israel a blank cheque to flout international humanitarian law without repercussion. The last seven weeks has shown just what this leads to, we have to keep up the pressure on our own government to hold Israel to account for its actions. This includes the immediate suspension of arms sales to Israel, while investigations are undertaken to determine if the arms we sell Israel have been used in violation of international humanitarian law against civilians in the occupied territories – as I called for in my question to the Minister of Defence last week.

If one thing has brought light in these dark times, it is the hundreds of thousands of people in this country and beyond who have taken to the streets week after week to say not in our name, who joined millions around the world who have stood strong in the face of attempts to intimidate and de-mobilise these expressions of solidarity. The strength of public opinion has been impossible to ignore.

We must maintain this pressure to end the bloodshed, starting with a permanent ceasefire.

We must then fight to make this atrocity a decisive break with the decades of subjugation and occupation of the Palestinian people, and demand nothing less than a sustainable, just and lasting peace that includes the right of return for all refugees and an end to settler colonialism, the siege, and the occupation, until Palestine is free.

Sanctions now – until there is freedom for Palestine

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By Hugh Lanning, Labour & Palestine

Today is UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People it is important to consider what a just and lasting peace would look like.

The ‘pause’ in the bombing has been widely, and wrongly, described by much of the media as a ceasefire, even though Israel is committed to continuing its war on the Palestinian people. But no pause or ceasefire, however long, will by itself bring about peace.

Israel has been at war with the idea and existence of a state of Palestine since 1948. The starting point for any peaceful solution must be the ending of Israel’s illegal military occupation and with it bringing down the Wall, ending the siege, giving the Palestinians back their land, water and gas and removing the settlers and their settlements.

Given Labour’s shameful failure to call for a ceasefire, one must be sceptical as to whether its leadership is capable of supporting a just and lasting peace or only rubber-stamping the continuation of an Israeli imposed military regime from Gaza on the Sea to Jericho on the River Jordan.

To achieve the possibility of negotiating a just and lasting solution there has to be a quantum shift in the balance of power. Sending Palestinian leaders into an imagined negotiating chamber with Israel is not just sending them in naked, but it’s with their arms and legs bound on the rack while the screws are applied to make them sign the proffered ‘agreement’.

With the armed forces of the occupier sitting on top of them, backed by the might of the Western World – the unholy trinity of the US, EU and UK – what chance do the Palestinian people have of emerging with their self-determination, rights and freedom intact?

Polls tell us that Palestine has the sympathy of the world community. The millions marching around the world for an immediate ceasefire and for freedom for Palestine show that the global population is being moved by what it is witnessing.

Some 75 years after the UN unilaterally created a nation state on Palestinian land – from then on, through the occupation in 1967, to Oslo and beyond, the world has continually failed to deliver on its promises of a Palestinian state.

To achieve this will of course require a volte face by the major parties in the UK Parliament. On the universal and uncritical support of Israel’s war on Palestine, we must be clear. This is not just a war on Gaza – it is a war on the whole Palestinian people and the notion of a Palestinian state. The West must use its considerable powers to drag Israel kicking to negotiations. Through its actions Israel has de-legitimised itself by acting outside and without reference to international law.

Today is the right day for the world to commit to ending Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and to impose sanctions until it finally complies. This should mean no arms trade, no military aid, no military cooperation and support. It is transparently clear how, when and where such support is used – to kill and repress in order to support its illegal occupation.

Rather than a bill by Government trying to ban boycott and disinvestment from Israel, the UK should be calling for full trade and financial sanctions until a just peace is agreed that achieves self-determination for Palestine. There is no doubt that the numbers marching on London’s streets and demonstrating up and down the country are demanding not just an immediate ceasefire, but also for Britain to acknowledge the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

On this day of solidarity, Labour must listen to those voices and heed the call of the next generation of voters for an end to the occupation and sanctions now and stop arming issue until there is a just peace for Palestine.

LABOUR MEMBERS FROM OVER 500 CLPs CALL ON STARMER TO BACK CEASEFIRE

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By the Labour & Palestine Team

In a strong show of the growing pressure on Keir Starmer to back the call for a Ceasefire Now in Gaza, over 10,000 – including members of over 500 Constituency Labour Parties – have signed a petition reading “We call on the Labour Party leadership to join the growing international calls for an immediate ceasefire in Israel and Palestine.”

Commenting on the strength of support for the petition, Apsana Begum MP said, “The ongoing dehumanisation and collective punishment of Palestinians will be marked in history as a crime against humanity. It is vital that the Labour Party stand up against war crimes and be counted.”

Hugh Lanning of Labour & Palestine, who initiated the petition, said “That some 10,000 Labour members from over 500 CLPs have, signed the Labour & Palestine petition calling on the Labour leadership to back an immediate ceasefire confirms the strength of opinion at the party’s grassroots.”

He added, “Keir Starmer’s continuing refusal to make the call for a ceasefire and his threats to sack frontbench MPs who vote for one tonight is deeply shocking to members and out of step with the public, risking lasting damage to Labour support. It is time for him to listen and urgently change course.”

Welcoming the growing support for a ceasefire in the Labour Party, TSSA General Secretary Maryam Eslamdoust said “The Labour Party is supposed to stand on the side of the oppressed, and those backing the petition are doing just that. Instead, we have seen MPs being suspended or forced to resign shadow ministerial posts simply for supporting the cause of peace. It is not good enough.”

Young Labour Chair Nabeela Mowlana said, “The last few weeks have demonstrated the strength of feeling amongst the British public that we will not sit by as our political leaders allow atrocities to take place in Palestine. A ceasefire is the first step in a desperately needed peace process rooted in justice and liberation. The Labour leadership must do the right thing by supporting the vote for a ceasefire.”

And Mohammad Suhail, Young Labour International Officer, added “The overwhelming support this petition has received from across the Party is heartening and indicates the position members want to see Keir Starmer take. Ahead of any Commons vote on a ceasefire, we call on all Labour MPs to stand on the side of peace, and vote to call for a ceasefire.”

Long-standing Palestinian solidarity campaigner and Labour NEC member Jess Barnard said, “Keir Starmer is not just out of step with Labours membership, he is on another planet. 76% of the general public support a ceasefire, 10,000 members have now signed the Labour and Palestine petition, hundreds of councillors, regional and national labour figures have all supported the calls for an immediate ceasefire.”

Fellow NEC member Gemma Bolton joined those welcoming the strong support for the petition, saying “That over 10,000 Labour members have signed the petition shows that they, like the general public, overwhelmingly back a ceasefire. They rightly understand a ceasefire is the only way to stop the horrific scenes we have seen broadcast from Gaza – and commence the process of negotiating a just and lasting peace.”

STATEMENT: Labour Must Lead Demands for An Immediate Ceasefire

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Labour & Palestine is horrified by the escalating violence in Israel and Palestine and the callous response of the UK government. We call on the Labour Party to act to help bring about an immediate ceasefire, as called for by the UN, the TUC and many others.

We are appalled by the loss of life of both Israelis and Palestinians and believe that the targeting and attacking of civilians and the imposition of collective punishments are, as is clear in international law, war crimes that must be condemned by all.

The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has said this latest outbreak of violence and slaughter of innocent civilians does not take place “in a vacuum”. The war in Gaza did not start on 7 October – it is a direct result of Israel’s illegal and brutal military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967.

The Israeli state has actively supported the building of illegal settlements in the West Bank, arrested and detained thousands – including hundreds of children – demolished homes and stood by while heavily armed illegal settlers viciously attacked Palestinians.

These breaches of Palestinian human rights have been well documented by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, among others. Yet these acts of violence, intimidation and oppression have been allowed to reach a new high since the extreme right-wing administration of Benjamin Netanyahu took office last year.

The failure of the parties to the Oslo Accords, including the UK, to fulfil the promises made to the Palestinian people of an independent state, have made any route to peace increasingly difficult.

The UK government’s uncritical support for Israel’s illegal actions is completely wrong.

The Labour Party must now lead demands for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the full application of international law to apply equally to all peoples.

Labour & Palestine.

Model motion – Oppose the Tory anti-boycott bill

Below is a model motion for CLPs to consider defending our right to boycott, which has been worked on by Labour & Palestine and Palestine Solidarity Campaign supporters who are active in the Labour Party.

It is important for CLPs to keep raising this issue to put pressure on in the run-up to further debates and votes in Parliament on the Tories’ anti-democratic legislation.

CLPs can still submit motions to this year’s Annual Conference – the deadline for motions is 5pm Thursday 21 September.

Alternatively, CLPs can instead pass the motion and send to the NEC (making the necessary small amendments to the model motion text.)

MOTION: Oppose the Tory anti-boycott bill

Conference shares the concerns of a wide range of civil society organisations – including the TUC, affiliated trade unions, charities, NGOs, faith, climate justice and human rights organisations – that the government’s ‘Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill’ or anti-boycott bill will limit the ability of public authorities to make ethical choices about spending and investment consistent with human rights, climate goals and international law.

We are proud of our movement’s historic support for boycott and divestment campaigns including the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa. Legal advice commissioned by the Labour Party makes clear that had this bill been law during the 1980s, it would have forced local authorities to do business with that criminal and racist regime.

The Tories have indicated that a major reason for proposing this law is to prevent public bodies from divesting from companies operating in Israel and occupied Palestine – even if they are complicit in violating international law and human rights.

Conference believes that public bodies and democratic institutions should be able to spend, invest and trade ethically in line with international law and human rights.

Any suggestion that, alone among peoples facing oppression around the world, Palestinians should be singled out and denied the right to appeal to people of conscience for support is wrong, runs counter to Britain’s legal obligations, and must be rejected.

Conference calls on the PLP to vote against the bill and, if it is passed, commits to repealing the anti-boycott law when Labour is in government.

LABOUR FRINGE: Building solidarity & speaking up for Palestine

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Liverpool ACC, Monday October 9, 5.30pm.

RSVP here // Retweet here.

With: H.E. Ambassador Husam Zomlot // John McDonnell MP // Mick Whelan, ASLEF // Beth Winter MP // Simon Dubbins, Unite // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour // Hugh Lanning, Labour & Palestine // Jess Barnard, LP NEC // Louise Regan, Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Labour & Palestine at Labour Party Conference 2023. Kindly supported by Unite the Union. Please note you need a Labour Conference pass to attend this event.

Supporting Palestinian Human Rights – new model motion

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Please take this model motion to your Labour Party meeting. It can also be downloaded here.

MODEL MOTION: SUPPORTING PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS

This CLP notes:

The increasing violent reality in occupied Palestine. In February 2023, Amnesty
International argued that Palestinian lives are in peril due to the increasingly
aggressive policies of the new Israeli Government.

This includes Israeli authorities constantly demolishing Palestinian homes whilst
settlements, considered illegal under international law, are aggressively expanded.

Amnesty also noted that of those who have died in the last year, 220 Palestinians,
including 35 in January 2023 alone, had been killed by Israeli forces.

The UK continues to sell weapons to Israel which are then used in human rights
violations.

The international criminal court has launched an investigation into alleged war
crimes in the Palestinian territories.

This CLP believes:

That Israel is using laws and policies to suppress opposition and resistance to its
military occupation.

That part of a genuinely ethical foreign policy for Labour must include security
justice, dignity and human rights for the Palestinian people.

International solidarity can play an important role in highlighting the plight of the
Palestinian people, including in terms of calling for an end to arms sales to Israel.

This CLP resolves:

To invite a speaker from Labour & Palestine to address a future meeting on the
current situation with regards to Palestine.

To send this motion to the Labour Party leader and Shadow Foreign Minister urging
them to speak up in support of international law and human rights for all

Palestine – what does a Labour ethical foreign policy look like?

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By Hugh Lanning, Labour & Palestine

The election of Israel’s most right-wing Government ever under the resurrected Netanyahu makes yet more important the reaction of the international community. Is there ever going to be a tipping point when Western governments stand up to Israel’s pressure and say ‘enough is enough?’ Judging by the response of the British Labour Party in recent times, the prospects are not good.

Much lip-service is paid to an ethical foreign policy – dating back to Robin Cook’s honourable attempt at developing such an approach in the late 1990’s. So, what would an ethical Labour foreign policy look like? The cynical would say that the first challenge for Labour would be to have ethics and secondly a policy. In contrast, the Tories have both, namely the self-preservation of Western neo-liberal globalisation – or to put more simply – to look after the rich and their interests.

Palestine would not be the central or sole focus of an ethical foreign policy, but it should be both a priority and a litmus test. If a Labour ethical foreign policy can’t tackle or encompass Palestine, then it is not fit for purpose. Simply doing what the US, Israel, the City and the far-right want doesn’t work or pass any test by which Labour should behave, although you could easily think that is where the Party is taking its lead from.

A truly ethical foreign policy would have three pillars – ethics, decolonisation and non-violence. First, ethics – the basis should be to use international law as the ethical framework. It might be nice to contemplate alternatives, be it revolutionary or socialist, but as a first step international law is a low bar to which Labour should aspire to advocate.

In doing this Labour should take account of the nature and scale of the breach – not cherry-pick the popular or the easy. Nor will it be able to respond to every and any type of breach. But, using Israel as an example, its list of breaches is long, extensive and serious – the Occupation itself, the Wall, Settlements, the annexation of Jerusalem, its treatment of children and prisoners and the growing evidence of it being guilty of the crime of apartheid.

However, we should recognise that international law is a Western, orientalist construct – so how do you select how and where to act? A frequent question from supporters of Israel is ‘why Palestine?’ – why don’t you pick other countries?

Therefore, the second pillar of an ethical foreign policy should be De-colonisation – a principle to determine how and when to be pro-active and possibly intervene. Blair developed the concept of ‘humanitarian intervention’, which went from Kosovo, through Sierre Leone to Afghanistan, ending up in Iraq.

The problem with such a framework is that it is the West determining how, where and when to intervene. De-colonisation has been described as “deconstructing and dismantling neo-colonial ideologies regarding the superiority of Western approaches and working toward a redistribution of power that was accrued because of colonisation”. We should use decolonisation to determine whose side we are on and whose solution we support – is it positive or negative on that scale of the redistribution of power?

In addition, it is important to take into account what the British role has been and what the colonial legacy is. In the case of Palestine, we ruled it between the wars, gave it away from Balfour onwards, stood by whilst the Nakba took place and armed and financially supported Israel then and now. If we owe reparations to any country – Palestine is high up that list.

It should not be our solution, but to support outcomes wanted by the self-determined, indigenous groups – in this case by the Palestinians. Self-determination being pre-eminent, it could take many forms – aid, trade or maybe keeping away, not supporting its oppressors.

Blair’s doctrine was used as a justification for war, which leads to the third pillar of an ethical foreign policy – non-violent methods. Solutions should not be based on force and military interventions. South Africa showed what can be done – there are a wide range of options that can be used. In a globalised economy there are plenty of sanctions and economic levers that can be applied, as is called for under international law.

It is not for nothing that Israel is targeting and trying to demonise the international growing ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ campaigns – it is because they are potentially effective non-violent methods that could be used to bring about compliance with international law. BDS should be applied, not banned. We are a rich western country, that doesn’t mean we should aspire to be a global, military power spending billions of much-needed resources on what we euphemistically call ‘defence’.

In considering what is to be done, it is also important to consider what is doable, what is the UK role, and what are the priorities. But principles alone are not enough, it is not simply having the right policy. We need to build a mass movement within and without the Labour Party that would support a government taking a radical approach. We saw during Truss’s brief reign the powers that can be unleashed when the British establishment feels its interests are threatened.

Labour & Palestine is building and seeking to energise pro-Palestine support within the Labour Party. Our challenge is to both win support for a progressive ethical foreign policy and, then, to keep up the pressure to have it implemented. Palestine shows the problem is not a Labour Government being too radical, rather it is it walking away and ignoring the issue. The passing of resolutions at successive party conferences and in many CLPs has shown that the support is there within the Party. Over the coming months Palestinians are going to need support to combat the onslaught they are facing from a rampant colonial settler movement intent on stealing their land, heritage and freedom.