The Palestinian labor movement reiterates its solidarity with workers across the world resisting all forms of oppression and calls for global action to end complicity in Israel's ongoing genocide and apartheid from Friday, November 20th leading up to the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on Sunday, November 29th 2026.
This coming November, we the undersigned Palestinian trade unions and federations urgently renew our call to unions around the world to:
- Uphold and defend the inalienable rights of the Indigenous people of Palestine as stipulated in international law, particularly the right of our refugees to return home and receive reparations, and
- Escalate BDS pressure to end all state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.
While approaching the third anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, and in light of Israel’s accelerating ethnic cleansing, annexation, settler violence and pogroms in the West Bank, and depraved violent repression of our prisoners, we remind ourselves that an injury to one is an injury to all. Israel’s livestreamed genocide, coupled with the wars and threats of aggression by its imperialist partners in Washington, is leading to the collapse of respect for international law, human rights and workers’ rights, threatening humanity at large, not just Palestinians.
Today, the Palestinian struggle for justice is at the heart of the battle against a world order of “might makes right” that is being imposed by the U.S-Israel genocidal axis and enabled by colonial powers. As Israel’s wars of aggression against the peoples of the region expand from Lebanon to Syria and from Yemen to Iran, and as the US threatens the peoples of Cuba, Greenland, Venezuela, Oman, among others, it is clear that hardly anyone is safe from this descent to the abyss.
The Israel-US axis is waging its war for Greater Israel without any consideration for the global recession (maybe even depression) it is potentially creating and its impacts globally. This includes the exacerbation of the cost of living crisis, austerity measures, the housing crisis, food insecurity, among others. Military budgets are swelling at the cost of health, housing and education. The first to feel the brunt of all this are working people and their families. The demands for affordability, fair wages, more and better social services, and lower living costs are organically connected to the calls for an end to astronomical military spending, vicious privatisation, and global complicity in Israeli crimes. This affects us all and therefore should unite us all. Where states fail to uphold international law and end their own complicity, workers and their unions must take the lead in acting to end this complicity!
Our struggle for justice in Palestine is inseparable from the global struggle against systemic racism, exploitation, climate devastation and all forms of oppression.
It is the duty of unions to ensure that the workers they represent—whether in ports, on ships, in businesses, or in government offices—are not involved, often without their knowledge and/or consent, in actions that involve complicity in atrocity crimes anywhere, including Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against our people.
The 2024 decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – that Israel is plausibly committing genocide, that its occupation is illegal, and its policies amount to apartheid – make ending all complicity in Israel’s crimes not only a moral but also a legal obligation. States, institutions (including unions) and corporations must impose targeted, lawful sanctions on Israel. We call on all union bodies and civil society organisations worldwide to organise, uplift and turn solidarity into concrete strategic action across the ten days leading up to the international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people from November 20th to November 29th 2026.
We, the undersigned Palestinian trade unions, call on workers and unions around the world to escalate their support for our liberation struggle by:
- Organising, joining and amplifying global peaceful actions to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People from Friday 20th to Sunday 29th November.
- Adopting ethical procurement policies (EPP) and, where applicable, ethical investment policies (EIP) that exclude corporations implicated in grave human rights violations anywhere, including in Palestine.
- Pressuring corporations and institutions they work in to end any complicity through ending contracts that directly or indirectly support Israel’s atrocity crimes, and adopting EPP and/or EIP.
- Rejecting any racist agreement with Israel that facilitates the substitution and further oppression of Palestinian workers.
- Escalating economic, academic, cultural, and sports BDS campaigns.
- Peacefully disrupting and blocking the transfer of military, energy and other dual-use supplies to Israel, by:
- Participating in actions to identify and stop the illegal transfer by sea, land or air, including by pressuring states to enforce international obligations in relation to such shipments, and by pressuring complicit corporate actors.
- Refusing to handle Israeli or Israeli-bound military supplies, energy and other dual-use cargo.
- Pressuring your governments to uphold their legal obligations following the ICJ rulings of 2024, as stated by UN human rights experts, by, at a minimum, imposing “a full arms embargo on Israel, halting all arms agreements, imports, exports and transfers, including of dual-use items that could be used against the Palestinian population under occupation,” as well as canceling or suspending “economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
- Cutting all ties with Israel’s colonial Histadrut federation and expelling it and all similarly complicit Israeli unions and associations (academic, medical, etc.) from all international fora.
- Declaring your union an Apartheid-Free Zone (AFZ) to end corporate and institutional complicity with systems of oppression, particularly Israel's regime of apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people.
Signatories:
- Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), Gaza
- Palestinian General Federation of Trade Union (PGFTU), Jericho
- General Union of Palestinian Workers (GUPW)
- Palestinian Union of Postal, IT & Telecommunications Workers
- Federation of Independent Trade Unions
- The Palestinian New Federation of Trade Unions
- Association of Employees of The Financial Sector - Palestine
- Health Services Employees’ Union
- Union of Workers in Kindergartens and Private Schools
- Union of Workers in Local Authorities
- Palestinian Electricians Union
- Southern Electricity Company Employees Union
- Palestinian Union Of Postal Services
- Palestinian Painters and Plasters Association
- Union of the Southern Local Authorities