On Saturday 24th June 2006 supporters of Palestinian rights around the UK will be taking part in actions promoting a boycott of Apartheid Israel.
As the British Government continues to boycott Palestinians by refusing to recognise their democratically elected government, by joining the EU in a blockade of aid and by entertaining Israeli leader Ehud Olmert in London whilst bombs rain down on Gaza, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign (BIG) call on activists nationwide to join the Boycott Day of Action against Israel.
During the day of action on Saturday 24th June, pickets and demonstrations will take place at stores selling Israeli products across the UK. PSC and BIG chapters will take part in creative actions to persuade the public not to buy goods made by Apartheid Israel and demand that retailers do not stock them. In Liverpool City Centre, Brighton, Islington/Hackney, Cardiff, Oxford, Southport, Exeter, Nottingham, Brixton, South East London, Birmingham, Manchester, Brent, Camden, Halifax, Durham, Darlington and many other places boycott actions are scheduled.
The PSC and the BIG campaign are responding to calls from Palestine calling for a boycott of Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. The call for an international boycott has been signed by 170 civil society organisations in Palestine.
In 2004 activists supporting the boycott occupied a factory belonging to Caterpillar, a company supplying Israel with military bulldozers for the destruction of Palestinian civilian homes. Later that year a group of activists shut down Agrexco Ltd’s plant in Middlesex by erecting a blockade around their depot. The company is responsible for exporting 75% of fresh produce grown in illegal Israeli settlements. Last month NAFTHE, a union of university lecturers voted to support an academic boycott of Israeli universities and academics.
PSC and BIG aim to build a mass campaign similar to that of a boycott of apartheid South Africa. The campaign focuses on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Apartheid Israel. In addition to its brutal occupation and theft of Palestinian land, the Israeli state also operates an entrenched system of apartheid against Palestinians all over Mandate Palestine and refuses the Right of Return to 6 million Palestinians scattered as refugees across the world.
PSC calls on the UK government to lift EU sanctions on the Palestinian people and place sanctions against Israel which continues to build an illegal Apartheid Wall inside the West Bank despite the Advisory Ruling of the International Court of Justice in 2005 declaring the Wall illegal.