Palestine

The STUC and its affiliated unions have all passed policy in favour of justice for Palestinians and the rights of all people in the region to live in peace within secure borders.

Over decades we have seen Israeli government encroachment into Palestinian land colonised in 1967, including occupation of Gaza, the annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, ongoing and massive illegal settlements in the West Bank and the construction of the Apartheid Wall.

We condemn all violence targeting civilians including those that occurred during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7^th 2023, killing hundreds of civilians with hundreds more taken as hostage. A day when the world united in grief for those innocent Israelis who lost their life.

We grieve too all those who have lost their lives and their homes in the preceding decades. Since 2005 and prior to October 2023, 4,006 people, of whom 168 were Israeli and 3,838 Palestinian, had lost their lives. Every life lost is a life too many. But the scale and disproportion of the suffering since is beyond comprehension.

Between October 7^th 2023 and November 2024 at least 40,000 Palestinians, half of them women and children have been killed at the hands of the Israeli military. The record number killed in Gaza does not include nearly 20,000 people who are either unidentified, missing or buried in the rubble. It is estimated that the true death toll could be over 186,000, taking indirect deaths into account.

In our view this constitutes a war crime and a genocide.