by consensus of the Action Apartheid Assembly

written by John Urquhart

edited by Ali Wilkin

In a sense the genocide being committed by the state widely known as “Israel” in the land that is Palestine resembles an iceberg. Much of it is below the waterline. Yet if you watch closely you can get an idea of the scope - by watching that waterline.

Yesterday we saw even more of it in plain view than usual.

More than fifty Palestinians were murdered, including in an attack on a UN clinic, in a single day. We have been forced witnesses to headless children and body parts in bags. Meanwhile the rhetoric from the genocidal project known as “Israel” has become even more murderous.

The Defence Minister of “Israel”, Israel Katz, said Wednesday that they would move to “capture extensive territory that will be added to the State of Israel’s security areas”. That is perhaps the least disguised dogwhistle for yet more ethnic cleansing in the Occupied Territories we have seen from an Israeli government minister.

That these plans include yet more of the Occupied West Bank, and include plans to annexe the entirety of that area, is yet more demonstration - as if it were needed - that this was never about ‘Hamas’ or about ‘rescuing captives’. “Israel” has recognised 28 new settlements which have seen the destruction, not just of the homes of Palestinians, but of schools, clinics and local infrastructure leading to the displacements of hundreds more Palestinians from their lands.

The “Israeli government” also continues to refer to preexisting Arab villages and towns as “illegal settlements”, in a pathetic reversal of the internationally recognised legal reality of their illegal annexation of Palestinian land.

It is glaringly apparent that Netenyahu and his Western backers have no interest in peace. The ICJ and ICC rulings last year have had no discernible impact. “Israel” and the West have no interest in anything but the completion of the project that is at the core of this often misnamed “war”: genocide.

This most recent blockade of the Gaza Strip now stands at 30 days. Bakeries are again closed - and not for the first time. Bread will again become scarce. Food prices will again rise sharply. The dire lack of shelters will continue because despite the terms of the now destroyed ceasefire “Israel” simply didn’t allow any in.

Most Palestinians families contend with illness, and the Israeli state destroying healthcare systems. Thousands have conditions which can only deteriorate under such a regime of oppression. Genocide is a mass disabling event, but as has been noted the “...systemic production of impairments and the practice of disablement are integral parts of Israel’s settler colonial project.” (‘Producing Impairment as a Genocidal Tactic’, Irish Centre for Human Rights)

British planes still fly over Gaza from Cyprus. The British government will not reveal the exact purpose of these flights, but it could not be more clear: our country is and has all along been a participant in this genocide.

That must stop. And we will continue to grow in order that we, as an Assembly and as a wider Party, can find ways to contribute more loudly to the goal of ending British complicity - and the wider goal of ending Apartheid in Palestine once and for all.