Palestinian Civil Society Reacts to the Trump-Netanyahu Genocidal Plan
In response to the so-called Trump Plan, a scheme primarily designed by Israel’s fascist government to save it from its unprecedented global isolation, in the midst of the ongoing, livestreamed US-Israeli genocide against millions of Palestinians in Gaza, and recognizing the diversity of political positions among Palestinian parties, the Palestinian popular and civil society consensus on the following 5 fundamental points remains solid:
- Our rights are inherent, inviolable, and non-negotiable:
The inalienable rights of the Indigenous Palestinian people are inherent and stipulated in international law.1 They cannot be extinguished, taken away, or redefined by any deranged genocidaire wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), any self-styled emperor who should in a fairer world be tried by the ICC, or any regional despot or authoritarian regime. Dismantling Israel’s regime of settler-colonalism, apartheid and illegal military occupation is a necessary condition for the Palestinian people to exercise our rights, including self-determination and the right of Palestinian refugees to return home and receive reparations.
The legendary resistance and resilience (sumud) of our people, especially in Gaza, but also in Jerusalem, Jenin, Akka, Haifa, and in refugee camps across historic Palestine and in exile, nourish our hope and boundless determination to safeguard our rights and bury all attempts to undermine them, as our ancestors have done for centuries against all colonial invaders. Palestinians are committed to ensuring that Israel and all complicit entities and individuals are held accountable for their role in the genocide and other crimes perpetrated against our people since the Nakba and throughout the ongoing Nakba. - The Israeli-US plan is coercive, colonial, and patently illegal:
International “agreements” concluded by way of coercion are void (without legal validity or effect whatsoever).2 Moreover, this plan violates the UN Charter, as well as the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and sovereignty,3 making it akin to the coercive rule imposed by European colonial powers over colonized peoples worldwide many decades ago. Even if implemented, any US-led administration in Gaza would rest on a legally invalid foundation, and its every action would be tainted by that illegitimacy and open to challenge under international law. The invalidity of the Trump plan will remain both a legal and moral basis for continued resistance and advocacy against any imposed authority in Gaza.
The International Court of Justice ruled in July 2024 that Israel’s entire presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful, constitutes apartheid, and must be brought to an end. States have an urgent legal obligation to neither recognise nor support this illegal regime, to end their complicity with it, and to act to dismantle it, as subsequently affirmed by the UNGA Resolution on 19 Sep 2024, and as done to South Africa’s apartheid regime.
- International BDS pressure is working like never before and the era of lawful sanctions has begun:
The internationally-wanted Israeli Prime Minister has recently admitted Israel’s unprecedented global isolation, so this Israeli-US plan must be understood as his desperate attempt to leverage all of Israel’s dominant influence in the US government to try to save genocidal Israel from this isolation. This isolation and the turning policy tides are also overwhelmingly due to the meaningful, persistent, principled and strategic solidarity of tens of millions worldwide–trade unions, students, farmers, artists, academics, as well as racial, economic, social, gender and climate justice movements. Our collective people power is fast reaching a tipping point in cutting complicity and ending Israel’s total impunity.
States from Malaysia to Colombia, from Slovenia to Spain, and from Türkyie to Antigua and Barbuda, and many more are finally heeding their legal duty to end complicity by cutting military, energy, trade, or other ties with Israel’s genocidal regime. Companies and investors are increasingly dumping apartheid Israel or beginning to pay a heavy price for their ongoing criminal complicity, as the campaigns against Microsoft, McDonald’s, Coke and Carrefour, among many others, show. Trade unions and workers are waging general strikes in Italy, work stoppages in Ireland, mass protests against the transit of military cargo in Morocco, among others. “BDS and boycotts have changed Israel’s global trade landscape,” as a senior Israeli trade official has recently admitted. Hundreds of cultural institutions, dozens of universities, and tens of thousands of writers, musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, (including many in Hollywood), are ending complicity and cutting ties.
Today, to count as decent, let alone progressive, one must support Palestinian liberation and fight complicity in Israel’s genocidal domination.
- What Palestinians want from the global solidarity movement:
Even if a ceasefire is reached, the genocide, the famine, the repercussions of the annihilation of Gaza will not end. Solidarity is more needed than ever, and it begins with ending complicity, which is a moral and legal obligation. The Palestinian consensus asks of the global solidarity movement, particularly trade unions and mass movements, as well as people of conscience to:
- Respect and advocate for the comprehensive rights of the Palestinian people (at the very least the three rights listed in the historic BDS Call of 2005); and
- Isolate Israel’s regime of oppression by ending all state, corporate and institutional complicity with it.
- Urgent solidarity actions now to disrupt complicity: We reiterate the call issued by a consensus of Palestinian trade unions and the rest of civil society for peacefully disrupting complicity, as per the following:4
- Blocking, occupying or otherwise disrupting strategic highways, bridges, ports, and facilities of complicit weapons, tech, media, financial and other corporations;
- Mass protests and peaceful disruptive actions at government offices (ministries of trade, transport, or foreign affairs, for instance) or parliaments, demanding that they comply with their legal obligations under international law, including by:
- Imposing “a full arms embargo on Israel, halting all arms agreements, imports, exports and transfers, including of dual-use items,” as called for by dozens of UN human rights experts.
- Cancelling or suspending “economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
- Joining the The Hague Group, the most promising inter-state initiative so far that is aimed at promoting concrete sanctions and meaningful, consequential accountability measures, and endorsing and implementing their Bogotá Declaration.
- Expel apartheid Israel from the UN by withdrawing its accreditation to the UN General Assembly and pushing for lawful sanctions against it similar to those imposed on apartheid South Africa.
- Adapt immigration and visa policies aligned with international legal standards, including by ending visa-free agreements with Israel and implementing screening of suspected Israeli war criminals.
- Strikes, where feasible, and conscientious objection to complicity in genocide at institutions and workplaces, including universities, city councils, among others;5
Escalation of boycott campaigns against priority targets of the BDS movement — including peaceful disruption at stores and company offices, as well as social media actions; - Launch broad intersectional campaigns to compel institutions — including city councils, universities, trade unions, hospitals, etc. — to adopt ethical procurement and investment policies, where applicable, that exclude companies knowingly and persistently involved in grave human rights violations, particularly war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Together, we can and must disrupt all complicity in Israel’s “final solution” for the Indigenous people of Palestine. Together we can dismantle Israeli apartheid just as South African apartheid was dismantled. Anything less would be a failure of humanity. •
Signed:
- Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU – Gaza)
- Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine
- Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
- Global Palestine Right of Return Coalition
- General Union of Palestinian Workers
- Palestinian Federation of New Unions
- General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT)
- Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE)
- General Union of Palestinian Women
- General Union of Palestinian Writers
- Agriculture Engineers Association – Jerusalem Center
- Palestinian Union of Postal, IT & Telecommunications Workers
- Palestinian National Institute for NGOs
- Federation of Independent Trade Unions
- Veterinarians Syndicate – Jerusalem Center
- Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Initiative (OPGAI)
- Union of Palestinian Farmers
- Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (STW)
- Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
- Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC)
- Civic Coalition for the Defense of Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem
- Coalition for Jerusalem
- Union of Palestinian Charitable Organizations
- Women’s Campaign to Boycott Israeli Products
- National Committee for Grassroots Resistance
- Southern Electricity Company Employees Union
- Association of Employees of The Financial Sector, Palestine
- Health Services Employees’ Association
- Union of Workers in Kindergartens and Private Schools
- Jawwal Employee Association
- Union of Workers’ Unions in Local Authorities – Hebron
- Palestinian Electricians Union – Hebron
Endnotes
- Art. 1(2), 2(4), 55, UN Charter, Occupation, ICJ (Advisory Opinion), Art. 47, Fourth Geneva Convention; UNGA Declaration on Granting Independence, Res. 1514(XV); the rights to self determination and freedom from colonisation as customary rule of international law in Chagos Islands, ICJ (Advisory Opinion).
- International agreements procured by the threat or use of force contrary to the principles of international law are void. Pact of Paris; Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties; Vienna Conference Declaration on the Prohibition of Military, Political, Economic Coercion in the Conclusion of Treaties; Fisheries Jurisdiction, ICJ (Judgement).
- See note 1.
- To minimize legal risks, we always call for consulting with movement lawyers first.
- Where a strike could cause significant harm to workers, “call in sick” instead – sick of Israel’s genocide and weaponized starvation and sick of your institution’s complicity in both.
