Labour Party pushed to recognise Gaza Genocide
Labour members prepared a conference motion to force Burnham to recognise Gaza genocide.
Labour members have tabled a conference motion demanding Andy Burnham recognise the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza, days after Israeli settlers shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank.
Momentum, Labour & Palestine, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign are circulating a model motion for next month’s conference, demanding the government accept the UN finding that the Israeli government committed genocide in Gaza, impose a full arms embargo and ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements. It comes days after Karim Shalaldeh, 17, was shot dead by settlers in the village of Sa’ir, near Hebron, on 21 August, one of two Palestinians killed in the West Bank that day, in the impunity that has come to define settler and military violence in the occupied territory.
The Labour conference Gaza genocide motion
The demand is not new. Last September, delegates defied Keir Starmer’s leadership to pass a Unison and ASLEF motion accepting the UN Commission of Inquiry’s finding of genocide and backing a full arms embargo, after roughly 30 local Labour motions on Palestine were struck from the agenda beforehand. The commission, reporting almost a year ago, found the Israeli government had carried out four of five genocidal acts defined under the 1948 Convention, including killing and the deliberate infliction of conditions calculated to destroy Gaza’s population, and pointed to evidence of intent in the statements of senior Israeli officials. Conference committed Labour to the embargo. The government never acted on it.
Burnham’s calculation
Burnham inherited that gap between conference policy and government practice when he took over from Starmer in late July. Weeks earlier, before taking office, he had apologised for Labour’s record on Gaza, calling the suffering “a scar on our collective conscience” and admitting the party “was too slow” to call for a ceasefire. He has stopped short of calling it genocide, saying that determination is for international courts, even as he concedes there is “increasing evidence” of war crimes.
Mounting pressure
The pressure has not eased since. More than 100 former British and French ambassadors wrote to Burnham and Emmanuel Macron this week urging them to suspend arms transfers and ban trade with settlements, accusing the Israeli government of ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Emily Thornberry, who chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee, renewed her own call for a settlement import ban that ministers have sat on for a year. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called the Israeli government’s newest settlement tender, published the same day settlers killed Shalaldeh, “unacceptable” and promised a “comprehensive set of measures” he has yet to specify.
Momentum’s Sasha Das Gupta said Burnham “must not allow the same failures that alienated voters under Starmer to continue.” The polling explains why the party is listening now: Opinium research for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign found 53% of former Labour voters who have defected to other parties named Gaza policy as a factor, rising to 67% among those who went to the Greens. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Dan Iley-Williamson put the choice to Burnham directly: break with Starmer’s “complicity in Israel’s crimes,” or face “plummeting support and a legacy of infamy.” Conference will settle which one he picks. Karim Shalaldeh will not be there to see it.
