Voices of the Palestine Solidarity Movement — West Kent Palestine Solidarity Campaign

By Rod Taylor, Secretary of West Kent PSC

Over 120 people – Christians, Jews, Muslims and people of no faith – joined our *Voices For Palestine* event, Dec 16th 2023.

On 16th December I helped to organise Voices for Palestine, a fundraiser for the people of Gaza, along with other local members of the West Kent Palestine Solidarity Campaign. We had booked one of the smaller rooms in the Camden Centre, but following an overwhelming response it became clear that we would need the large main hall to accommodate everyone.

In the end around 120 of us – Christians, Jews, Muslims and those who do not subscribe to any faith – came together, listened to speeches and music, talked and shared food. Young people from the local mosque spoke eloquently and movingly about the plight of the Palestinians: British children pleading for the killing of Palestinian children to stop. The event raised £700 for the charity Medical Aid For Palestinians.

We had set up our local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign only a few months earlier, before the terrible events of 7th October and their equally terrible aftermath. Our branch and the Palestine solidarity movement in the UK and beyond has grown exponentially in response to those events.

But why do we do it? Why, as relatively privileged westerners, do we put so much time and energy into campaigning for the rights and safety of our sisters and brothers in a remote Middle Eastern country?

It’s a legitimate question, and an important part of the answer is about collective responsibility. As British people we like to take pride in positive national achievements in which we played no personal part, but we are not so good at confronting the more negative aspects of our history. Our colonial past casts a long shadow over Palestine, and as a nation we bear heavy responsibility for the events which have unfolded there over the last hundred years and the suffering of the Palestinian people which continues to this day.

Awful and cataclysmic though the events of 7th October were, they did not happen in a vacuum. As the United Nations secretary general António Guterres has said:

The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.

This is not to excuse any atrocities that Hamas may have committed, but to put them in the context of decades of oppression and occupation of Palestine by the State of Israel. The current conflict has even deeper roots, and may be traced back as far as the momentous statement made in November 1917 on behalf of the British government, and which came to be known as the Balfour Declaration. It consists of a single sentence:

His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the overwhelming Arab majority of the population in Palestine – around 94 percent at that time – except in a backhanded way as the “existing non-Jewish communities”. Not for the first time, Palestinian voices were ignored or silenced, something which was to become a recurring theme during the following century. And for all Balfour’s warm words in 1917 about “a national home for the Jewish people”, Britain’s primary motivation for its actions in Palestine was, and continues to be, British strategic self-interest.

The Palestinian territories (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. According to international law, ‘military occupation’ is the effective military control by a power of a territory outside of that power's recognised sovereign territory.

Gaza has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007, restricting the flow of essential goods and the freedom of movement for Gaza’s residents. Gaza is not accessible by sea or air, and by land there are only three crossings, two of which are controlled by Israel and one by Egypt. In 2010 the then UK Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the blockade of Gaza, saying "Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."

The Israeli government under Netanyahu has not attempted to hide its contempt towards the Palestinians. In October its defence minister described Palestinians as “human animals” and ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, cutting off food, electricity and fuel. The Israeli ambassador to the UK has described the Nakba (‘The Catastrophe’ – the violent displacement of the Palestinian people and the destruction of their society in 1948) as “an Arab lie”, and she has repeatedly made statements denying the right of Palestine to exist.

On 2nd November a group of UN special rapporteurs stated:

We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide.

In relation to Israel’s actions in Gaza, Pope Francis has said:

Here we have gone beyond war. This is no longer war. This is terrorism.

This is the context in which Israel’s military action against Gaza takes place. This is not a war in the conventional sense between reasonably equally matched sides, but the bombardment of a civilian population, which has nowhere to escape to, by its occupier. Israel’s military apparatus is vast, and it and receives arms exports from its close allies, the US and the UK. Weapons being used to kill Palestinians are manufactured in British factories.

By 20 December the death toll in Gaza had reached 20,000, of which at least 8,000 were children and 6,200 were women.

The scale of the public reaction to events in Gaza has been unprecedented: hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in London and other cities around the world to demand a ceasefire and basic human rights for the Palestinians. In November, in the pouring rain, a large crowd turned out in Tunbridge Wells to show support.

It is crucial to understand that support for Palestinians and protests against the State of Israel are not in any way aimed at the Jewish community as a whole. The source of the Palestine-Israel conflict is not a religious one, but a political one concerned with the issues of basic human rights and self-determination. Significant numbers of Jewish people are active in the movement, and large, well organised ‘Jewish blocs’ participate in the London marches.

Hopefully local events like Voices for Palestine can provide safe spaces in which people of all faiths and none can stand against all racism together, and focus on the political and humanitarian issue at hand.

At the time of writing the conflict is still ongoing; we live in hope that by the time you read this there will be a much-needed ceasefire. A ceasefire now will help everyone in the region to be safer and more secure, this is the only route to a political settlement and eventually peace. But we will continue to campaign on behalf of our Palestinian brothers and sisters until they are free from violence and repression.

The best thing we can all do in these times of division is to keep the conversation going and listen to each other in a spirit of learning and understanding. Despite the very difficult circumstances in which they live, there are many examples of Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, working side by side to forge a better future. One of the most positive and moving things about Voices for Palestine was seeing people from different parts of our local community, who do not usually connect with one another, coming together in friendship. I hope this is something on which we can continue to build.