Bezalel Smotrich’s measures to extend Israeli property law into the West Bank are a continuation of a decades-long project to dispossess Palestinians and preclude statehood, argues Hugh Lanning
Continue reading “Palestine’s never ending Nakba”
“Let us recommit ourselves to standing up for inalienable human rights of all women around the world.”
Fran Heathcote spoke at a recent online ‘Women for Palestine’ event on Monday 9 March. You can read her speech in full below.
Continue reading “Stand up for the women of Palestine – Fran Heathcote”
“Are Palestinian women not just like you and me? Are Iranian women and children not deserving of dignity like you and me?”
Apsana Begum MP spoke at a recent online ‘Women for Palestine’ rally on Monday 9 March as part of solidarity events organised with International Women’s Day. Read an edited version of her speech or watch the event in full.
Continue reading “Sisterhood means standing with all women, including Palestinians – Apsana Begum MP”
“This blatant land grab is yet another attempt to drive Palestinians from their homes and expand illegal Israeli settlements. It amounts to the de facto annexation of the West Bank and is in clear violation of international law.”
Richard Burgon MP and Imran Hussain MP’s letter to the Foreign Secretary
Continue reading “Sanctions on Israel over West Bank Annexation Plan – Richard Burgon MP and Imran Hussain MP write to Foreign Secretary”
On International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, HUGH LANNING warns that the US-led “Comprehensive Plan” entrenches decades of Western complicity in Israel’s domination and denial of Palestinian land and rights
Continue reading “In Palestine the victim has been found guilty”
“Today the Labour movement stood on the right side of history and in solidarity with the Palestinian people, sending a clear message to the Labour leadership: we will not remain silent on the crime of genocide.” – Maryam Eslamdoust, TSSA General Secretary
Continue reading “Labour votes to acknowledge Israel’s genocide in Gaza”The following model contemporary motion for Labour Party Conference taking place 28th September – 1st October 2025 is supported by Labour and Palestine.
Labour Party members are encouraged to propose the motion at their appropriate Constituency Labour Party meeting for submission to the conference.
CLPs can submit either one contemporary motion or one rule change by 5pm on Thursday 11th September.
Six motions from the CLP section can be debated at Conference, as well as six motions supported by affiliates. CLPs that decide to submit a contemporary motion must wait until the publication of that report before submitting.
More info on submitting motions can be found on the Labour Party website here.
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Meaningful action to end atrocities in Palestine
Conference notes:
Conference believes:
Accordingly, conference calls on the government to:
250 words
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.
Model contemporary motion for Labour Party conference: Uphold international law for Palestinians
Conference notes:
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:
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.
Labour & Palestine 