Government must act against accelerating annexation

JVL agreed this emergency motion on Israel’s policy of annexation unanimously at its annual general meeting on 1 March.

Government must act against accelerating annexation

JVL notes Israeli government actions that have advanced annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories:

• Proceeding with the construction of the E1 settlement which will split the West Bank in two
• The continued occupation of half of Gaza and the building of infrastructure to make this occupation permanent
• Complicity in moves by Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ to turn the Western half of the Gaza Strip into a playground for western capital.
• Use of Israeli armed forces to protect and sometimes assist settlers evicting Palestinians from their homes in order to expand illegal settlements

JVL further notes recent moves by the Israeli Government to advance their project of annexation to create a Greater Apartheid Israel between the river and the sea. These moves include:

• Changing the law to make forced sales of Palestinian land to settlers easier
• Allowing the Israeli state to demolish Palestinian homes in Areas A and B of the West Bank
• Allowing the registration of large parts of the West Bank as Israeli state land
• Extension of direct Israeli control over large parts of Hebron previously under Palestinian administration

JVL calls on the British Government to denounce these actions as contrary to international law and institute immediate effective and wide-ranging sanctions on Israel including, but not limited to:

• Ending all arms sales to and from Israel
• Closing all Israeli owned or controlled arms factories in the UK
• Ending all Israeli access to UK financial institutions
• Terminating all trade agreements with Israel
• Advising public sector pension funds against investing in Israeli securities and companies.

JVL urges all its members and supporters to urge their MPs to press the Government to impose these sanctions

Mike Cushman said, in introducing the motion

There is wide appreciation of the genocide in Gaza. There is still too little understanding of the wider aims of Israel. We have, over the past decades, become familiar with occupation. Occupation as a policy implies that occupation may end. Although the date for that end has steadily receded.

Israel is becoming increasingly willing to announce that the occupation has no end and to make annexation–the permanent seizure of territory–state policy. Some calls come from the most extreme voices in an extreme country. Ben Gvir and Smotrich, now buttressed by Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. In their speeches it’s an ever-spreading annexation. Anywhere between the river and the river. From the Euphrates to the Nile. The moderates only want the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, and the often overlooked parts of Syria, the Golan, they continue to hold.

The motion does not talk about boycott. Boycott is already JVL’s policy and we urge all members to boycott all Israeli goods and services. Boycott is our civic action. It is important and useful, but it is no substitute for state sanctions, which is what this motion calls for. We urge all members to press their Members of Parliament to support their speedy introduction and to raise the issue of sanctions with every political and community organisation they are part of.

Mouin Rabbani describes in detail how Israel is incrementally changing the law on land registration and ownership in the West Bank to advance annexation, in defiance of both international law and agreements they have signed in a recent Palestine This Week podcast (starting at 6′ 10″)