With the announcement by the US of the launch of phase two of the Netanyahu-Trump illegal and colonial plan for Gaza, the BDS movement warns this constitutes a continuation of the US-backed Israeli genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. We call for renewed pressure for ending the genocide and for lawful, targeted sanctions globally.
Since the “ceasefire” announcement last October, a less visible form of genocide has been unfolding. In total breach of even the agreed conditions for phase one of the Israeli-orchestrated Trump plan, Israel’s illegal occupation forces have murdered at least 442 Palestinians in Gaza since October 9th. Israel’s genocidal forces are still firing at Palestinians even within the supposed “safe zone,” while it continues its criminal siege of Gaza preventing essentials like food and medicine from reaching people, and the Rafah crossing in Gaza remains closed. Israel has carried out almost daily “ceasefire” violations, over 1,190 in total.
The US-Israeli 20 point plan is in clear violation of the most basic tenets of international law, including the Genocide Convention, the Apartheid Convention, the Geneva Conventions, and the UN Charter. The US and Israel hope to achieve through this plan what their genocide has so far failed to bring about — the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. It also explicitly seeks to suppress all forms of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s colonial regime, creating concentration camps controlled by “International Stabilization Force” (ISF) and Israel.
Israel and the US, a full partner in this genocide, have used the so-called ceasefire as an attempt to rescue apartheid Israel from a downward spiral, to launder its global image and muffle international outrage. It’s meant to push Palestinians out of the headlines, weaken calls for boycotts and sanctions, and make our struggle seem less urgent. But by all indicators, that plan has failed, as BDS campaigns are growing! This is mainly because millions can see that the reality hasn’t changed: Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is ongoing, albeit less intensely and less visibly; Israel is still murdering Palestinians on a daily basis, still bombing them in their tents, and the famine and all the repercussions of the annihilation of Gaza have not ended. Israel must be held accountable for its “holocaust in Gaza,” as the chairwoman of Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem calls it, and for its decades of settler-colonialism, illegal occupation and apartheid. The United Nations Human Rights Office earlier this month finally acknowledged that Israel is guilty of apartheid.
A new phase of the “ceasefire” plan will not stop Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, only meaningful accountability will. The tide has turned and there is no going back. Five European states have pulled out of Eurovision because of apartheid Israel’s participation; Microsoft has ended a major project with an Israeli military unit under pressure from shareholders and media exposure of its complicity in Israel’s crimes; McDonald's lost over $7 billion in revenue the previous year due to global boycotts, according to reports published by Israeli financial media in early 2025; Colombia has enacted a total ban on coal exports to Israel and on weapons imports from Israel, and countless other states, institutions and corporations are scaling back or cutting ties with genocidal Israel. The “ceasefire” has failed to act as a smokescreen for Israel’s ongoing brutalities, military aggression across the region, and genocide in Gaza.
The BDS movement calls for pressure on all states to:
- Mobilize opposition in the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council and all other UN bodies to oppose the illegal Trump-Netanyahu plan and to expel apartheid Israel from the UN and all international fora.
- Hold Israel and its accomplices accountable for the genocide and underlying regime of illegal military occupation and apartheid through lawful, targeted sanctions – starting with comprehensive military, energy and trade embargoes.
- Uphold international law, particularly the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and act on their legal obligations to prevent, end, abstain from any recognition of or aid or assistance to Israel’s atrocity crimes and illegal acts against the Indigenous Palestinian people.
- Join and strengthen The Hague Group and all other initiatives aimed at upholding international law.
To stop the empire, Israel must first be stopped and held seriously accountable. Building a global wave of resistance to US imperial designs is now an existential need for humanity, to save us all from the abyss of utter lawlessness, immense suffering, and possibly a nuclear war.
The BDS movement calls on all people of conscience to escalate BDS campaigns, to redouble the pressure for lawful, targeted sanctions globally, and to intensify grassroots pressure to confront US and Israeli aggression everywhere, from Gaza to Venezuela, and now Greenland too. To free Palestine is to free all of the peoples of the world.
Let’s escalate BDS pressure to further isolate apartheid Israel and stop the genocide now.