“Palestinians are standing in the dark but we know that they will rise again as they have always done. Our task has to be to stand with them.”
By Louise Regan, Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Over 40,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel’s war – two-thirds of them women and children. Since October 7th at least 16,314 children have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza. In March 2024 UNRWA reported that more children had been killed in Gaza in four months than in four years of war world-wide and thousands more have been killed since. Ten children a day face an amputation with no anaesthetic and at least 3000 children have had at least one limb amputated.
Israel has been ordered by the International Court of Justice to take action to prevent a genocide occurring, whilst the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has said there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met.
The supposed ‘safe zones’ are facing repeated attacks and evacuation orders are forcing already displaced civilians into increasingly overcrowded and uninhabitable shelters.
Over the last few weeks schools, refugee camps, and a busy market have all been considered legitimate targets for Israel’s unrelenting war machine. Palestinians are facing bombardment from the air, shooting from the sea, and shelling on the ground with images of burned and decapitated children becoming a regular occurrence on our social media feeds.
Nine of every ten schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. More than eight in ten of them will need full or major work to be functional again. All universities have been destroyed.
More than 625,000 students have had no access to education since October. They have witnessed horrific and terrifying events, and the trauma they have suffered will take years if not decades to overcome.
And now, the people of Gaza are on the brink of another crisis. Polio has returned for the first time in 25 years, posing an unimaginable threat to all of Gaza’s children of paralysis and death. Its outbreak in Gaza is a direct result of Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health and sanitation infrastructure. Agencies and medical professionals from around the world, including Save the Children, have called for an immediate ceasefire to allow for the vaccination of Gaza’s children, and yet still Israel’s bombing continues.
Right now every ounce of our energy and effort is focused on calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the ending of weapon sales to Israel and immediate aid to be allowed in to Gaza.
But we know that history did not begin on October 7th. This genocide is built on the foundations of more than 76 years of colonisation, military occupation and apartheid.
Right now Palestinians are standing in the dark but we know that they will rise again as they have always done.
Our task has to be to stand with them, to escalate our actions, to keep speaking out so that we can help them to finally make this stop.
We know Palestinians tell us that they don’t need our tears, they need our voices as theirs are silenced – but they need more than our words, they need our actions too.
We must not stop until there is a permanent ceasefire. Until the genocide is ended. Until all the walls of apartheid are dismantled. And until the day when Palestinians are finally free.
- Louise Regan is Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
- You can become a member of PSC here.
- This article is part of the special ‘Labour Outlook’ bulletin produced for TUC and Labour Conferences 2024. Download it here.
