BYM warns UK on arm sales to Israel
BYM highlighted Britain’s ‘past actions’ in the Balfour Declaration and as colonial ruler in Palestine from 1920 to 1948.
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) welcomed the UK government’s ‘long overdue’ recognition of the State of Palestine last month, but said it does nothing to ‘absolve the UK of its legal and moral obligations’ to end its ‘complicity’ in the Israeli occupation.
In a strongly-worded statement, BYM said that the government has continued this complicity, ‘allowing £6 billion a year in trade to flow between the UK and Israel at preferential rates. This trade includes goods, services, and financial investments with companies that profit from the occupation and those based in Israeli settlements built illegally in Palestine.
‘Our government continues to permit the sale of arms used to kill men, women, and children in Gaza. And it continues with business-as-usual relations with Israeli leaders as they order the mass starvation, killing, and ethnic cleansing of a people.’
Formal recognition was important nonetheless, said BYM, as it ‘sends a message to the current Israeli government that their efforts to ethnically cleanse the land of Palestinians and annex it for a Greater Israel are not accepted’.
It also brings the UK into agreement with over 150 other countries that have already recognised ‘the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to live on their own land and be governed by their own people’.
BYM highlighted Britain’s ‘past actions’ in the Balfour Declaration and as colonial ruler in Palestine from 1920 to 1948. These continue to have ‘profound consequences’ for Palestinians, it said.
