Palestine

Posted on 15-06-22 by sally fitzharris Number of votes: 0 | Number of comments: 0

As a Labour Party member I would like to comment on what should be Labour's response to major humanitarian crises.

The one absolute and abiding yardstick has to be our support for international law: and our total failure to speak up for this is nowhere clearer than in Palestine, the Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

While our government holds that Israeli settlements in West Bank territory are illegal - the Geneva Convention states that transfer of population is a war crime - absolutely no action is taken to prevent the increasing theft of Palestinian land.

Collective punishment is illegal. It is almost inconceivable that the Israeli government has been allowed to impose a siege on the two million inhabitants of Gaza, for a staggering sixteen years.

A young Russian soldier has been given life imprisonment for his shooting of a Ukrainian civilian, who was clearly unarmed and presented no danger. This was rightly perceived as a war crime.
But this action is commonplace in Palestine.

According to B'tselem's calculations (2021), some 2,171 Palestinian children have been killed in the last two decades by Israeli military actions. The British government's silence is deafening.

A motion was overwhelmingly passed at the Labour party Conference in 2021 for 'effective measures' to be taken to stop Israel's continued illegal occupation and human rights abuses.

These measures should at the very least include sanctions on UK trade with Israel, and a stopping of the arms trade, when armaments are used to violate the human rights of Palestinians.

I cannot support a Labour Party that is selective over which country may break international law with impunity. Either we believe in justice or we do not. We have to get back to an ethical foreign policy.

Referring to: Britain in the world

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