Adopted at the Lambeth UNISON branch committee on 17 October 2023

This branch notes:

1. That Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas on 8 October in retaliation to Hamas firing hundreds of rockets into and invading Israel with dozens of soldiers/volunteers.
2. That US President Joe Biden has promised to send to Israel billions of dollars worth of weaponry and ammunition and has already sent the Ford carrier group of six of the USA’s most modern warships to the eastern Mediterranean.
3. That over 1,200 people have been killed, thousands injured and millions of dollars of damage done in just a few days, with the certainty that these numbers will be multiplied in the following days, weeks and months ahead.

This branch believes:

4. That Israel is a settler colonial state that has denied the Palestinian people their right to self-determination for 75 years and millions of the original inhabitants of Israel-Palestine the right to return to their homeland, killing tens of thousands in wars.
5. We do not endorse the atrocities committed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad against Israeli civilians and young people in their incursion into Israel but we recognise the boiling rage brought about by decades of occupation, discrimination, arbitrary detention and killings – the de-facto establishment of an apartheid like state by Israel in occupied Palestine. We do not equate the oppressor with the oppressed and continue to support the Palestinian resistance and its right to defend itself against the Israeli army and armed settlers by any means necessary.

This branch resolves:

6. To publicise all protests against this war and in solidarity with the Palestinians, encouraging members to attend and, where possible, sending our branch banner. This branch affiliates/donates to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign
7. To demand Lambeth Council declares its solidarity with the Palestinians and flies their flag from the Town Hall. Calls for an immediate ceasefire, the lifting of all blockades, the return of all stolen and occupied land to the Palestinians, and a just and lasting peace acceptable to all Palestinians.
8.  To affiliate/donate to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign

9. To call for an immediate ceasefire, the lifting of all blockades, the return of all stolen and occupied land to the Palestinians, and a just and lasting peace acceptable to all Palestinians. Trade unionists, workers and socialists have a duty to speak up for the Palestinians and anti-Zionist Israelis, who are resisting the Zionist state’s attacks on Palestinians.
10. To send this motion to the NEC for discussion and voting.