SPSC Emergency Call to Action

19 May 2025

We have just returned from Occupied Palestine, where we delivered solidarity greetings from Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC).

We listened to farmers explaining that by continuing to work on their land (at least on what remains from decades of theft by Israel), they resist Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism while facing harassment and violence from Israel’s Occupation Forces (IOF) and settlers from encroaching colonies. We were privileged and moved to have met and heard firsthand from refugees now twice displaced, describing the terror tactics the IOF uses to raid, occupy, and demolish homes. We are inspired by Palestinian trade unionists and grassroots activists who organise their communities while under constant threat of violence, imprisonment, and ethnic cleansing.

We saw the oppressive encroachment of illegal settlements, the suffocation and destruction of Palestinian villages, the overwhelming presence of the occupation apparatus - through its apartheid walls, some movable to allow for further colony expansion, checkpoints that look like mazes or watch towers mounted by snipers - and the daily harassment and humiliation of Palestinians by their colonisers. There is constant disruption of daily life, with flying checkpoints closing off entire villages, cities, and regions, turning them into instant prisons.

We saw firsthand the steadfastness of Palestinians, resisting violence, displacement, isolation, and erasure by the terrorist state of Israel.

Israel, with active support from the United States and Britain, is committing horrific crimes as it accelerates their genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. We have learned that the situation for Palestinians in the rest of Occupied Palestine is no less urgent.

During the ten days of our visit, here are just some of the crimes Israel has committed against the Palestinian people:

• Israel launches ‘Operation Gideon’s Chariot’, increasing their bombing and moving ground forces to reoccupy Gaza, while the US failed, once again, to ensure Israel allows humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
• Israel destroyed the European Hospital and killed over 300 people in Gaza.
• In the Occupied West Bank, the IOF destroyed 20 buildings in Tulkarem, and 500 square meters of land were uprooted and burnt, villages were attacked, and land was seized in the Salfit region, North of Ramallah.
• A mob of settlers, backed by the IOF, invaded Mughayer Village with tear gas and sound bombs, shooting a 17-year-old boy in the stomach.
• In Hebron, the IOF refused Palestinians entry to the Ibrahimi Mosque, forcing them to pray outside.
• Over 500 settlers invaded Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, intent on carrying out a lamb sacrifice ritual within the grounds.
• In the Old City of Al Quds (Jerusalem), the IOF shot and left a Palestinian man to bleed to death before raiding his home and detaining his family.
• Settlers set fire to crops in the village of Turmus Ayya, terrorising shepherds.

In the meantime, a report has confirmed that the Labour government provided more arms export licenses to Israel in the last three months of 2024 than the Tory government approved between 2020 and 2023.

We should not be surprised that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a great admirer of racist Israel and an appeaser of Trump, has now turned his attention on us, attacking our communities in a speech celebrated by the far-right.

The message is clear: there is no time to waste. We must now escalate our solidarity work, educate, agitate, and organise to strengthen our collective power to pressure our governments, complicit institutions, and corporations to isolate the state of Israel.

SPSC will intensify its solidarity work with members, branches, and affiliates. We will explore new partnerships to maximise collaboration for effective solidarity and invite you to join us, work with us, and partner with us.

One farmer told us, 'Time is killing us’ - it is our duty to escalate our solidarity, to cut the supply of economic and diplomatic support, the arms and military aid that keep the racist and genocidal monstrosity that is the state of Israel in existence. For all our sakes, and urgently, for Palestinians, the Zionist regime must fall so that all the people in historic Palestine can live in freedom, equality, and justice.