Britain’s unions commit to boycott of Israeli settler goods

Britain ’s trade union movement has voted overwhelmingly to support a boycott of goods made and grown in illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.

The motion passed at the 2009 TUC Annual Congress in Liverpool on 17 September by unions representing 6.5 million workers across the UK, also called for an end to arms exports to Israeli, disinvestment from certain Israeli companies and British Government support for moves to suspend the Israel-EU trade agreement. The Congress stopped short of approving a motion which would mandate a boycott of all Israeli goods.

Hugh Lanning, chair of the London-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: ‘This motion is the culmination of a wave of motions passed at union conferences this year, following outrage at Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, and reflects the massive growth in support for Palestinian rights. We will be working with the TUC to develop a mass campaign to boycott Israeli goods, especially agricultural products that have been produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.’

The motion was tabled by the Fire Brigades Union. The biggest unions in the UK , including Unite, the public sector union, and UNISON, which represents health service workers, voted in favour of the motion.

The motion also condemned the Israeli trade union Histadrut’s statement supporting Israel ’s war on Gaza , which killed 1,450 Palestinians in three weeks, and called for a review of the TUC’s relationship with Histadrut. In the same week a review of the events of the Gaza invasion in January 2009 by a South African judge found that Israel was guilty of war crimes and a 'disproportionate' response to rockets fired by Palestinian militants. It stated that Hamas-led militants had also committed war crimes by firing rockets into civilian areas of southern Israel.

Britain’s trade unions join those of South Africa, Norway and Ireland in voting to use a mass boycott campaign as a tool to bring Israel into line with international law, and pressure it to comply with UN resolutions that encourage justice and equality for the Palestinian people, and as well as similar calls from other bodies such as the Students Union at Manchester University in the UK.

Sarah Irving is a freelance writer specialising in social and environmental issues and the Middle East.