Green Party Conference Motion on Palestine

Calling my friends in the Green Party. Please co-propose this motion to our next conference. All you need to do is send the following email to the Standing Orders Committee. (soc@greenparty.org.uk)

Dear SOC,

I’m emailing to co-propose the motion titled
Recognition of Israeli Apartheid, Israel’s Genocide, and Supporting the BDS Movement In Communications’

This is the link to the motion: https://spaces.greenparty.org.uk/content/perma?id=249046

Kind regards,
[Name]
[local party]

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Motion here in full.

Title: Recognition of Israeli Apartheid, Israel’s Genocide, and Supporting the BDS Movement In Communications

Synopsis: The Green Party reaffirms its commitment to international law and promoting equality and human rights of the Palestinian people. This motion seeks to establish clear policy positions with our communications reflecting the party’s unequivocal solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, liberation, and equality.

Motion
Insert the following into our Record of Policy Statements

Recognise Israeli Regime as an “Apartheid” and Amend Policies for a Sustainable Society in the International Section following IP634:
The Green Party recognises and condemns Israel’s policies as apartheid, based on international treaty and customary law, including, most notably, but not limited to:

International Convention on Apartheid (1973) and Rome Statute (1998): Israel’s practices, including extrajudicial killings, severe movement restrictions, discriminatory laws, and economic exploitation, align with apartheid definitions.
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965): Israel’s racial segregation and discrimination violate this treaty, which Israel ratified in 1979.
We call for an end to all forms of apartheid and equal rights for all. The term “apartheid” accurately describes the institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, as identified by international human rights bodies and legal experts.

Recognise Israel’s Genocide and Use the term “Genocide“:
The Green Party condemns genocide per the UN Genocide Convention (1948):

Acts qualifying as genocide: Israeli military operations causing civilian deaths, severe mental and physical harm, life conditions threatening Palestinian survival, and policies disrupting Palestinian family life and heritage.
As of 2024, the systematic violence and restrictions on Palestinians meet the criteria for genocide. This motion ensures our positions comply with international law and our commitment to justice and human rights.

Affirm Green Party’s Support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement:
The Green Party should have included its explicit support for the BDS Palestine Movement in the 2024 manifesto. We affirm our commitment to explicitly supporting BDS in our internal and external communications going forward. Supporting the BDS movement is essential to holding Israel accountable, to supporting Palestinians’ rights to equality and self-determination, and to demonstrating that our support, as a nation, is not performative. Israel should not be able to profit from its apartheid regime or its unlawful occupation of Palestinian land. If the UK Government has learned anything from its failure to support BDS during South African Apartheid, it must be that the impact of applying political pressure is nothing without an economic response. Anti-apartheid promises are hollow if nothing is done to reform the institutions that fund apartheid regimes. The UK Government must not make the same mistakes again.

Background Information/Paper

The Health Ministry in Gaza has reported that as of 17 July 2024, 38,713 Palestinians have been killed. This does not include the roughly 10,000 presumed dead under the rubble. However, in a July 2024 article, renowned peer-reviewed British medical journal, The Lancet, reported that the number of persons killed in Gaza is likely to exceed 186,000. The journal based this estimate on the consideration that armed conflicts have indirect health effects that extend beyond the direct harm caused by violence. The article explained that “even if the conflict were to end immediately, many indirect deaths will continue to be recorded in the coming months and years due to causes such as reproductive diseases, infectious diseases, and non-communicable diseases,” which are likely to go untreated given the ongoing blockade of medical resources and humanitarian aid, and that Israel’s bombing and destruction has caused 34 hospitals to go out of service. While 186,000 may seem like an alarmingly high number, the article emphasised that this prediction is still a conservative estimate. The journal explained that “in recent conflicts, the number of indirect deaths has ranged from 3 to 15 times the number of direct deaths,” adding that even if we apply a conservative estimate of 4 indirects deaths for every direct death (i.e., 48,713 including those presumed dead as of 17 July 2024), we find that the number of people well exceeds 186,000. This would mean that approximately 8% of the population in Gaza was effectively exterminated by Israel’s genocide. Martin McKee & Salim Yusuf, “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential,” The Lancet (5 July 2024) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext