We, leading Palestinian trade unions and civil society coalitions representing the absolute majority of Palestinians in Palestine and in exile, are writing with urgency as LO begins its 36th Ordinary Congress while the Indigenous Palestinian people is facing and resisting Israel’s ongoing genocide, culminating its 77 years of settler-colonialism and apartheid. We deeply appreciate LO’s solidarity with the Palestinian people, particularly with our trade unions, but we are very alarmed at some of the language and some glaring omissions in the recommendations presented by LO’s Secretariat on Palestine and urge you to change it, as suggested below, in order for LO to truly meet its ethical and legal obligations towards Palestinians.
As Palestinian trade unions have written repeatedly, including in the recent May 1st statement:
“Israel is only able to continue its livestreamed genocide against Palestinians, including daily massacres, burning our children, men and women alive, or starving and thirsting them to death, due to the ongoing complicity of states, companies and institutions around the world. On this May Day, a historic day for the international labor movement that commemorates the struggles of workers for dignity and justice, as Palestinian trade and professional unions, we urgently renew our call to unions around the world to escalate all effort to end this shameful complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, colonial apartheid and genocide.”
(1) Solidarity Begins with Ending Complicity
LO’s draft resolution on Palestine misses this fundamental duty to end complicity. Instead, it repeats that “LO's overall goal in the region is to strengthen the situation of the Palestinians in general and Palestinian civil society and the trade union movement in particular.” It emphasizes that LO’s “most important contribution is to strengthen the Palestinian trade union movement and civil society,” without mentioning its legal and moral obligation to end and help end the complicity of the Norwegian State, institutions and corporations in Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide as the absolute highest priority.
Strengthening Palestinian unions and civil society is predicated first and foremost on LO doing everything possible to end complicity in Israel’s grave human rights violations against the entire Palestinian people. Visits to the OPT are always welcome, but they are secondary in importance to the absolute necessity of striving to end all forms of complicity, particularly now as our people faces genocide in Gaza and brutally escalating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and beyond.
We strongly urge LO to adopt ending complicity as its highest priority to express meaningful solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, self-determination, and the return and reparations for our refugees.
(2) “War in Gaza”?
The draft resolution calls Israel’s genocide a “war,” omitting the fact the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices, UN human rights experts, many States in the Global South, Amnesty International, not to mention the entirety of Palestinian civil society and unions, today converge on accurately describing it as a genocide. Israel’s genocide has led to the martyrdom of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, and its induced famine is threatening hundreds of thousands, including 60,000 children. LO also ignores that the International Court of Justice in January 2024 determined that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. The mere risk of genocide, according the Genocide Convention, triggers the legal obligations for States, corporations, and other entities to end all forms of complicity with all genocidal acts.
We strongly urge LO to refer to Israel’s crimes in Gaza as genocide, in harmony with international law and the growing consensus among international human rights networks and civil society, and to therefore do everything possible to end all forms of relations with Israel that may aid or assist its genocidal acts.
(3) Inconsistency on Apartheid
As the draft resolution recalls, the July 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion declared Israel’s entire presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, as illegal and went further to rule that Israel is violating the CERD prohibition against apartheid. Yet, LO has omitted from its draft resolution any mention of the duties triggered by the apartheid part of the ICJ decision, focusing on the occupation part alone.
As dozens of UN human rights experts have stated, in order for all States, including Norway, to meet their obligations triggered by the ICJ A.O., they must “Cancel or suspend economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.” Furthermore, States must “Impose 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.”
We strongly urge LO to recognize its duty to meet these obligations and to call on the Norwegian government and institutions to also comply with them.
(4) Inconsistency on Boycotting Apartheid
LO, as far as we know, played an honorable role in the international movement that pushed for boycotting, divesting from and imposing sanctions on apartheid South Africa. It supported economic and cultural boycotts, among other measures, as a means to pressure the South African regime to end its system of racial segregation and oppression. LO also collaborated with other trade unions, civil society groups, and political parties in Norway to promote sanctions to isolate the apartheid regime.
Following the ICJ’s decisive determination that Israel is imposing apartheid on Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory, we strongly urge LO to adopt the same positions and endorse the same boycotts, divestment and sanctions measures against apartheid Israel that it had adopted against apartheid South Africa, and to transform them into action with the urgency demanded by Israel’s ongoing genocide.
(5) What Palestinian Need and Expect from LO
We recall the demands of the Palestinian trade unions’ May 1st statement in full and wish to emphasize the 5 most urgent priorities for LO to:
- Pressure the Norwegian sovereign fund (oil fund) to divest entirely from corporations that are complicit in aiding or assisting Israel’s illegal occupation (including settlements) and apartheid, starting, as a top priority, with military corporations that arm Israel’s genocide.
- Pressure the Norwegian government to uphold its legal obligations following the ICJ rulings of 2024, as stated above, starting with imposing a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, including military parts and dual-use items and ensuring end-user compliance with international law.
- Adopt ethical procurement and ethical investment policies that exclude dealing with corporations that are implicated in grave human rights violations (particularly atrocity crimes) anywhere, including in Palestine.
- Escalate economic, academic, cultural, and sports BDS campaigns to end Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.
- Cut all ties with the Histadrut and support expelling it from all international fora.
Signatories:
- General Union of Palestinian Workers (GUPW)
- Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), Gaza
- Council of Political Parties in Palestine
- Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO)
- Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS)
- Palestinian Union of Postal, IT & Telecommunications Workers
- Federation of Independent Trade Unions
- Palestinian Federation of New Unions
- Engineers Association - Jerusalem Center
- Medical Association - Jerusalem Center
- Palestinian Dental Association - Jerusalem Center
- Palestinian Bar Association
- General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT)
- Agricultural Engineers Association - Jerusalem Center
- Veterinarians Syndicate - Jerusalem Center
- Union Of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)
- Association of Employees of the Financial Sector - Palestine
- Health Services Employees’ Association
- Union of Workers in Kindergartens and Private Schools
- Jawwal Employees Association
- Union of Workers in Local Authorities
- Palestinian Electricians Union
- Southern Electricity Company Employees Union
- Palestinian Postal Workers Union
- General Union of Palestinian Women
- General Union of Palestinian Peasants
- General Union of Palestinian Writers
- Union of Palestinian Farmers
- Palestinian National Institute for NGOs
- Women Campaign to Boycott Israeli Products
- Global Palestine Right of Return Coalition
- Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Initiative (OPGAI)
- Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (STW)
- Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
- Civic Coalition for the Defense of Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem
- Coalition for Jerusalem
- National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba
- Union of Palestinian Charitable Organizations