London, October 8th, 2024

We write to mark one year since Israel’s launch of its genocidal assault against the Palestinian people in Gaza. One year ago, we released a statement as British Palestinians calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to British complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing.  Today, we reaffirm our unified and steadfast commitment to our people’s collective struggle for liberation, self-determination and return, in the face of a campaign determined to erase our existence. 

A year ago, Israel’s occupation forces began to target every facet of Palestinian existence in Gaza - our hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, churches, homes - enacting the declared promise to “eliminate everything”.  This has continued for 365 days. A population of two million people, the majority of them children and grandchildren of those forcibly made refugees during the creation of the state of Israel in 1947 and 1948, have now been made homeless once again, forced to experience a second Nakba. At least 42,000 people have been killed, with scholars estimating the true death toll to be 186,000 or more.

And yet there has been no ceasefire. One year on, despite the atrocities carried out by Israeli military forces and Israel’s actions in Gaza being widely acknowledged as plausibly genocidal, including at the International Court of Justice, the British government has made no decisive break with Israel.

Israel’s systematic crimes against humanity stretch beyond Gaza. More than 6,400 Palestinians have been killed or injured in the occupied West Bank since October and thousands have been detained in cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions. A “network of torture camps” have triggered an urgent investigation by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. From the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, various laws, policies and practices methodologically privilege Jewish Israelis over Palestinians - the definition of apartheid. In the past month, the impunity afforded to the state of Israel has emboldened its leaders to launch assaults in Lebanon, killing thousands and forcing millions there to flee their homes.

Britain has long played handmaiden to Israel’s ethnic cleansing and brutalisation of our people, during the British mandate period, which led to the first Nakba of 1947 and 1948, and stretching into the diplomatic cover and weapons Britain provides to Israel today. Increasingly, these actions - to prevent an occupying power being held accountable for crimes against an occupied people - isolate Britain on the world stage. International courts, the vast majority of the international community, and millions of people across the world – including the British public – understand that Israel is violating international law and acknowledge states’ legal and moral obligations to end this onslaught and uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. Yet our government continues to behave as if this is not the case, keeping approximately 90% of arms export licences in place, refusing to implement sanctions, and continuing to hinder or abstain from measures to hold Israel to account at the United Nations, or via the International Court of Justice. 

As British Palestinians on this day, we remember that this aggression did not start one year ago and that Britain’s particular role in aiding and abetting aggression against our people stretches back over a century. We reassert that we remain united by our shared history, by the spirit of our people, and by a commitment to universal principles of justice. We call upon all people of conscience to continue the struggle to change the abhorrent edifice of British complicity in genocide and to support Palestinians both in the region, and in Britain, with the resources and institutional support the community requires. At the British Palestinian Committee, we will continue to work tirelessly until the principles of freedom, justice and equality are upheld for all.