Members on Israel and Palestine: ‘Green party values oblige us to stand with the oppressed.’

On August 7, 2016, Green Party of Canada members who attended the party’s biannual convention in Ottawa voted overwhelmingly to support a limited use of boycott, divestment and sanctions against those sectors of Israel’s economy and society that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

That occupation has caused incalculable suffering to the Palestinian people. As stated by the Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Palestinians’ “humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government.”

For decades, Israel’s occupation has facilitated its construction of settlements in the West Bank. In 2004, the International Court of Justice determined that Israel’s settlements and those parts of its separation wall that jut into occupied territory violate international law.

Canada’s own government states that “Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention” and “constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”

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