The Global Anti-Apartheid Conference for Palestine held in Johannesburg, South
Africa, on 12th May 2024, attended by over 400 participants from 32 countries,
adopted the ‘Johannesburg Declaration on Israel’s Settler-Colonialism, Apartheid and
Genocide: Towards a Global Anti-Apartheid Movement for Palestine’. The Declaration
urged people and organisations globally to expand and escalate actions in solidarity
with the Palestinian people’s courageous liberation struggle to end genocide, ethnic
cleansing, occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid ‘from the River to the Sea’.
Since the Johannesburg conference, and despite the provisional measures issued by
the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 24th May 2024 explicitly ordering Israel to
halt its military offensive, Israel continues to relentlessly bomb civilians and Gaza’s
infrastructure, increasingly making the territory unliveable. The ICJ also reiterated its
order for Israel to immediately allow the unhindered passage of humanitarian aid,
including food, water and medicines. Israel has ignored this and previous orders and
is deliberately hastening the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians through
disease and famine. Israel has also rejected United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
resolutions demanding a ceasefire, including one on 11th June 2024 that was
supported by 14 of the15 UNSC members (with one abstention).
As we witness the horror and daily carnage, we take courage from Palestinians who,
despite facing appalling and inhuman brutality, continue resisting on all fronts. We
condemn governments that persist in supporting the genocidal Zionist regime,
including the USA, UK, many EU states, and despotic Arab regimes, as well as those
who remain silent. We are sure they will be found guilty of complicity in Israel’s
genocide following recent ICJ, International Criminal Court (ICC) and UN Human
Rights Council decisions. The US went further than others in allowing its
‘humanitarian’ pier to be used to launch one of the worst massacres of Palestinians,
and in supplying its own murderous special forces to assist in the commission of war
crimes. While the atrocities are continuing in Gaza, this year has also seen the largest
land theft in the West Bank in 30 years.
Furthermore, Israel has repeatedly shown that its actions are a threat to global peace
and security. Over decades, it has blatantly violated international law with abandon;
rejected UN resolutions and rulings of the ICJ with disdain; labelled UN institutions
“terrorist” and as enabling “terrorism”; undertaken illegal actions in various countries
of the world, including assassinations, bombings and other acts of violence against
individuals and states with impunity. Israel also possesses a large nuclear arsenal and
its officials, at different times, have emphasised their willingness to use those
weapons of mass destruction, thus imperilling the region as well international peace
and security more generally. Its weapons industry is a threat to peace in various parts
of the world, particularly as Israel is unconcerned about producing and using banned
weapons such as cluster bombs and white phosphorus. In June 2024 the Human
Rights Council and several independent experts again reiterated their call to states
and arms manufacturers to cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions
and other military equipment to Israel.
Israel’s crimes are so heinous, their depravity so disturbing, Palestinian suffering so
intolerable, and the UN so paralysed that people around the world are increasingly
rising up in outrage. This level of global solidarity – students on hundreds of university
campuses demanding divestment; workers refusing to handle goods and arms to and
from Israel; cultural workers and sports people condemning and boycotting events
with Israeli participation; communities declaring apartheid-free areas and even
countries taking tentative steps to impose sanctions on Israel – was last witnessed
during the struggle against apartheid South Africa.
Attendees at the Conference often on the frontline of these actions, vowed to
support, strengthen and expand BDS actions such as these. Our programme of action
encourages the establishment of activist, grassroots structures in every country to
stop the genocide. Delegates supported campaigns for the release of prisoners;
reparations and compensation for the wanton destruction and crimes; the exercise
of the right of return for refugees and the ending of Israel’s occupation, apartheid and
settler colonialism.
During the conference, workshops were held on the themes of boycotts, divestment
and sanctions; interfaith activities and campaigns; changing the narrative; actions in
the legal and multilateral spheres; Palestinian popular and other struggles against
settler colonialism and apartheid and supporting Palestinian political prisoners and
humanitarian support. Participants also convened in six regional workshops: Africa,
Asia Pacific, Arab World, Latin America, North America and Europe. The key areas for
action that arose from the deliberations are outlined below. These actions seek to
confront Israel’s settler colonialism and apartheid through diplomatic, legal, political,
activist and solidarity actions.
Stop arming genocide
Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians is carried out with weapons supplied by
Western powers, especially the United States, which has been the largest single
provider of military financing and arms to Israel for decades, as well as by Germany,
Canada, Italy and the United Kingdom, among others.
Selling weapons to and buying weapons from Israel, including
spyware/cyberweapons, amount to criminal complicity in its crimes, as do other
forms of financing its war machine. The weaponry and technology the Israeli military-
industrial complex exports around the world are field tested on the bodies of
Palestinian men, women and children. Through its sale of high-tech weaponry,
‘securitisation’ and methods of pacification, Israel plays a key role in fuelling conflicts
and the suppression of human rights globally.
We call on the global solidarity movement to mobilise through direct action,
lobbying, grass roots and trade union activism to:
• Pressure governments, parliaments and corporations to immediately impose
a #MilitaryEmbargo on Israel, as called for by the UN Human Rights Council
and dozens of UN human rights experts. This should include the sale and
transfer of weapons, military equipment and dual-use technology, cutting of
military funding in the case of the US, and a ban on importing Israeli arms and
spyware and on joint military and security projects.
• Campaign against, expose and, where possible, prosecute mercenaries from
different countries joining the Israeli occupation forces.
• Disrupt the manufacturing and transport of weapons, weapon parts, and
other military equipment to Israel, including in transit states.
• Stop Israel training police forces and security agencies around the world.
• Mobilise the world to end Israel’s nuclear, chemical and biological warfare
threat.
No trade with Apartheid
Support the Palestinian call for BDS against Apartheid Israel similar to the call on the
international community made by South Africans in support of their liberation
struggle. BDS is already making investment and trade with Apartheid Israel
increasingly unprofitable and contributing to the contraction of the Israeli economy.
National and local governments and other institutions in the West are trying to
impose bans on BDS actions precisely because they work.
Intensify BDS campaigns in communities, associations, educational institutions,
faith-based organisations, trade unions, and workplaces to:
• Directly hit the profits of businesses operating in Israel through targeted
consumer boycott campaigns against the most complicit companies. Take
actions that raise awareness and create reputational damage to companies
doing business as usual with génocidaires. Ask shops, businesses,
institutions and municipalities to declare themselves “apartheid-free zones”
by refusing to stock or purchase products complicit in Israeli genocide and
apartheid.
• Demand that governments implement trade sanctions on Israel.
• Join the global campaigns at ports to “block the boat”, to disrupt and stop
Israeli-owned ships and consignments to and from Israel.
• Campaign for a global energy embargo against Israel to halt all exports of
coal, gas and oil to the apartheid state.
• Pressure parliaments and governments to reject anti-BDS legislation and
promote the passing of pro-BDS legislation.
Don’t play with Apartheid
Apartheid Israel uses its participation in international sporting structures and
cultural exchanges as tools of normalisation. The sports and cultural boycott against
apartheid South Africa had a powerful psychological and public relations impact on
the racist regime. Palestinians are making the same call against normalisation and to
isolate Apartheid Israel. It is unconscionable that Israel is still able to participate in
global sporting events such as the Olympic Games, the Football World Cup and
other international competitions.
Increase urgent campaigns for national sporting codes and representatives to
international sports bodies to:
• Suspend Israel’s membership and ban it from international tournaments and
games including the International Olympic Committee and FIFA until it ends
its grave violations of international law, particularly its apartheid rule and
the crime of genocide it is perpetrating in Gaza.
• Raise awareness and urge cultural workers including unions, associations,
venues and cultural spaces to:
• Boycott and/or work towards the cancellation of events, activities,
agreements, or projects involving Israel, its lobby groups or its cultural
institutions.
• Ask international venues and festivals to reject funding and any form of
sponsorship from the Israeli government.
Stopping the Scholasticide
There continues to be a deliberate effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian
education system, an action known as “scholasticide”. The term refers to the systemic
obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of lecturers,
teachers, students and staff, the destruction of educational infrastructure and the
erosion of the intellectual and cultural fabric of Palestinian society. Thus far, 450
schools and all 12 universities in Gaza have been bombed, together with archives,
libraries and printing presses. Israel’s destruction of this infrastructure leaves 625,000
school and 90,000 university students in Gaza without access to education. To date,
8,600 students, 497 educators and administrators, 98 professors and four university
presidents have been killed, many with their families.
In the West Bank, the occupation forces have systematically attacked Palestinian
universities and other educational spaces. These actions include regular storming of
universities, arresting student council members and killing students and educators.
Since October 2023, the occupation forces and armed settlers have killed at least 438
Palestinians, including 106 children across the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
The murdered include 100 Palestinian students, injured 494 and forcibly detained at
least 349. The occupation forces have also invaded Palestinian teachers’ homes,
assaulting families, and enforcing arbitrary arrests. In the ’48 areas as well, over 80
Palestinian students at 25 ‘Israeli’ institutions have been targeted and punished
merely for liking tweets and authoring posts expressing sympathy for their family
members in Gaza.
We call on the solidarity movement to support a comprehensive and consistent
boycott of all academic institutions in Israel as advocated by the Palestinian
Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). This entails:
• Refraining from engaging in academic and cultural cooperation,
collaboration, or joint projects with Israeli institutions.
• Desisting from publishing in or reviewing articles from Israeli-linked
academic journals or publishing in collaboration with Israeli institutions.
• Refusing to serve as external examiners of dissertations associated with
Israeli universities and/or Israeli-linked institutions.
• Refusing to write recommendations or to submit joint grant applications
with/at Israeli universities and/or Israeli-linked institutions.
• Refusing to enrol in Israeli-linked international faculty teaching and/or
student programmes, conduct research at and/or with Israeli institutions, or
engage in academic visits or fact-finding undertakings funded by Israel, its
complicit institutions, and/or its international lobby groups.
• Supporting Palestinian academics, students and their institutions.
Ending Reproductive Genocide
Since October 2023, the Israeli regime’s reproductive genocide in Gaza, through
systematic violence and the deliberate targeting of women and children, has
increased exponentially. The arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killing of children
in the West Bank has also increased. The mass murder of women, children and babies
is a deliberate genocidal effort to eradicate not only current but also future
generations of Palestinians. Restrictions on access to vital resources such as food,
water, electricity, and medical treatment results in women, particularly pregnant
women and children suffering the most.
In June 2024, the UN Secretary-General’s envoy for children and armed conflict,
Virginia Gamba, added Israel to the UN’s “list of shame”. The report covers grave
violations including killing and maiming, sexual violence, abduction, denial of aid and
attacks on schools and hospitals. It only reports on violations verified by the UN. The
report attributed 5,698 violations to Israel’s “armed and security forces” verifying the
killing of 2,267 Palestinian children – most in Gaza between Oct.7 and Dec. 31 – but
said the process of determining attribution was ongoing, adding: “Most incidents
were caused by the use of explosive weapons in populated areas by Israeli armed and
security forces.” By June 2024, over 20 000 children have been killed, 19 000
orphaned and 21 000 missing. Children feature overwhelmingly amongst the almost
90 000 Palestinians injured. Many children have been severely injured, over 1000
have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia.
Advance the fundamental rights of Palestinians to bodily autonomy, safety, and
justice through:
• Disseminating materials that outline the concept of reproductive genocide
and its devastating impact.
• Collaborating with reproductive justice advocates globally through rallies,
protests, and public demonstrations to demand a ceasefire and an end to
the violence in Gaza.
• Advocacy for policy changes at both national and international levels to
address the root causes of reproductive genocide in Gaza. Perpetrators of
violence and human rights violations in Gaza must be held accountable, and
justice for affected communities must be sought.
• Targeting mainstream and alternative media outlets to secure coverage of
the crisis, op-eds featuring Palestinian voices particularly women and
emphasise the urgent need for action.
• Raising awareness internationally with organisations that focus on the rights
of children to explore ways of supporting affected children, providing
psychological and trauma counselling and assisting in resuming educational
activities.
Highlighting Ecocide
Since its founding, Israel’s settler colonialism has attempted to ‘greenwash’ the
crimes of the Nakba, by planting non-indigenous forests over depopulated and
destroyed Palestinian towns, damaging local ecosystems, uprooting ancient olive
trees, stealing water from Palestinian aquifers, and, more recently, flooding tunnels
in Gaza with seawater, thus imperilling Gaza’s water supply for generations to come.
Israel’s military onslaught has had enormous effects on Gaza’s ecosystems and
biodiversity. The scale and potential long-term impact of the damage is ecocide and
must be investigated as a war crime. The Geneva Conventions require that warring
parties do not use methods of warfare that cause “widespread, long-term and severe
damage to the natural environment”. Yet, Israel has dropped 85 000 tonnes of
explosives – more than three nuclear bombs – on a densely packed area of 365 km2.
Much of Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure, farms, 7,500 greenhouses and orchards
have been destroyed. Olive groves and farms have been reduced to packed earth; soil
and groundwater have been contaminated by munitions and toxins; the sea is choked
with sewage and waste; and the air polluted by smoke and particulate matter. The
bombing has left about 30 million tonnes of debris, unexploded ordnance and
hazardous material, with much of the rubble containing human remains.
It is the responsibility of Israel and its allies – which provide Israel with diplomatic
cover and weapons – to ensure the restoration of Gaza’s ecology, environment, water
resources, and to remove the debris and hazardous material with which Israel has
polluted Gaza.
We commit ourselves to:
• Inform and mobilise climate justice organisations and environmentalists to
understand the extent of Israel’s ecocide and to campaign against it.
• Counter Israel’s use of greenwashing to legitimise its war on Gaza and to
normalise oppression and environmental injustice.
• Mobilise against Israel’s ‘reforestation’ project with Jordan and the UAE, also
known as Project Green and Project Prosperity, which is aimed at
normalisation with neighbouring Arab countries.
• Strengthen the global campaign against the Jewish National Fund (JNF),
which raises funds globally for Israel’s settler-colonialism and greenwashing
initiatives.
Confronting Zionist propaganda and promoting the Palestinian narrative
The dominant Zionist narrative must be countered by ensuring the conversation is led
by Palestinians, and by amplifying narratives which highlight the Palestinian history
of colonisation and the legitimacy of the Palestinian right to resist genocide, ethnic
cleansing, occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.
We call for implementing education and public campaigns in the mainstream and
alternative media, including social media, to:
• Amplify Palestinian voices to counter Israeli ‘hasbara’ (propaganda).
• Legitimise and assert the Palestinian narrative and the right of Palestinians
to resist.
• Characterise Israel as a racist, apartheid, settler-colonialist state founded on
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
• Share Palestinian stories of the ongoing Nakba and current living conditions
under genocide and apartheid.
• Through various educational means and media, work to entrench the fact
that Zionism is a political project and Israeli oppression is unrelated to
Judaism.
• Collaborate with anti-racist organisations and movements and show that
Zionism is racism.
• Promote discussion and education of Palestinian history with learners and
students globally.
Punishing the Zionist project legally and diplomatically
Identify and expose Israel’s illegal actions. Support legal, diplomatic and
multilateral initiatives to hold Israel accountable under international law and use
legal means to promote Palestinian rights by:
• Empowering activists and communities with information around ICJ/ICC
cases using traditional and social media and other fora.
• Localising legal action against Israeli war crimes and the war crimes
complicity of other states using universal jurisdiction.
• Exploring class actions for damages against governments complicit with
Israeli crimes.
• Developing and maintaining a repository of evidence of Israel’s crimes, as
well as precedents, treaties and conventions that Israel violates.
• Forming task teams to work for the decriminalisation of the Palestinian
narrative and the decriminalisation of the Palestinian right to resistance.
• Coordinating legal actions in different states to prosecute their citizens who
join the Israel Occupation Forces.
• Defending Palestinians and solidarity activists faced with criminal
prosecution and assisting them with legal defence.
• Utilising civil society spaces and lobbying in regional and UN structures
including the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and special
mechanisms, treaty bodies such as the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ISESCR); Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD).
• Lobbying friendly states to form a bloc to campaign for the revival of the
UN’s Special Committee Against Apartheid and to campaign for sanctions
against Israel.
• Lobbying African states to ensure the revocation of Israel’s observer status
at the African Union.
Supporting Palestinian prisoners and their families
The Treatment of Palestinian prisoners, detainees and hostages remains one of the
most under-reported Israeli crimes because of restrictions on access for journalists
and even humanitarian agencies such as the International Red Cross. Furthermore,
organisations such as Addameer which maintains updated information on Palestinian
prisoners, have been banned by Israel. Since October 2023, thousands of Palestinians
have been kidnapped, disappeared, tortured and sexually abused, as described by
released prisoners. Israeli prisons where Palestinians are held are sites of physical,
psychological and emotional torture including against children and the elderly.
Hundreds of these hostages held by Israel are children.
Advocate for Legal actions by:
• Establishing a Palestinian Legal Defence Fund for prisoners and their families.
• Working with NGOs dealing with Palestinian prisoners, document the
number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and their conditions.
• Lobby for access to prisoners.
• Working to ensure effective documentation of the situation of Palestinian
prisoners by UN Special Rapporteurs.
• Advocating for the adoption and adherence to the ‘Nelson Mandela
Principles’ for the treatment of prisoners and for Israel to adhere to known
standards for treatment of prisoners.
• Campaigning against the detention of children and strengthening existing
campaigns such as “Free Them All” and other campaigns that focus on
political prisoners.
• Highlighting the fact that close to 10 000 Palestinians are held hostage in the
prisons of the occupation.
Promote People-to-People solidarity by:
• Facilitating connection between families of Palestinian prisoners and families
in other parts of the world that can provide moral support, maintain
communications and publicise the stories of individual prisoners.
• Connecting with anti-xenophobia and migrant rights organisations to ensure
Palestinians who seek political asylum are granted refugee status.
Mobilising faith-based communities
Religion is often misused and abused as a justification and a tool of oppression, as
was the case in apartheid South Africa and is now the case with apartheid Israel. This
places a particular responsibility on religious communities to respond to situations of
oppression. While it is necessary for different faith communities to mobilise their own
members for actions, it is also necessary and useful to mobilise in an inter-faith
manner, with adherents of different faiths standing together against Israel’s
genocide, apartheid, colonialism and occupation.
Within the Global Anti-Apartheid Movement for Palestine, adherents of different
faiths, faith communities and faith-based organisations will undertake the
following actions:
• Set up an interfaith task team to coordinate these activities across all sectors
of civil society.
• Confront Christian Zionism and work to dispel the notion that Christians are
theologically obligated to support Zionism and the state of Israel, and to
undertake education programmes on this matter especially in working class
communities.
• Dispel the notion that Zionism and Judaism are synonymous, and that
criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.
• Build relations between different faith groups to develop a global anti-
Zionist, anti-apartheid interfaith movement and interfaith advocacy for
Palestine.
• Consult the Palestinian Christian leadership on building the Kairos for
Palestine and Palestinian interfaith networks.
• Work towards a global interfaith conference for Palestine.
• Issue a call on faith communities to support the boycott, divestment and
sanctions (BDS) campaign.
• Consider an interfaith march of religious leaders from various traditions to
the borders with Israel – from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria.
Intensifying the Global Anti-Apartheid Movement against Israel and for Palestine
Conference attendees agreed to cooperate with other organisations working on the
various issues and campaigns in this Programme of Action.
We call on the global solidarity movement to:
1. Intensify all civil society solidarity campaigns and initiatives within our localities,
countries, regions, continents and international networks. Strengthen and form new
partnerships, deepen coordination and encourage anti-apartheid formations to
develop in each country based on context specific, dynamic and action-oriented
agendas.
2. The South African Anti-Apartheid Steering Committee will continue operating as
an Interim Steering Committee for a three-month period following the publication
of this Plan of Action in order to continue to engage in inclusive and wide-ranging
consultations with Palestinian civil society and political entities in Occupied
Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora.
3. Support regional formations focusing on united action with all around the world
who agree with our Programme of Action. Through this process we will collectively
build the Global Anti Apartheid Movement on the ground leading to establishing a
committee with representation from Africa, Asia Pacific, Arab World, Latin America,
North America and Europe towards holding a global launch gathering.
Build the Global Movement for BDS!
Palestine will be Free, from the River to the Sea! Sanctions Against the Génocidaires Now!
