Gerry Carroll has welcomed the announcement that 12 states, including Britain, will ban imports from illegal West Bank settlements, describing it as "a historic step, and one that is long overdue, won by years of protest on our streets."
Carroll said: "This is a genuine breakthrough, and everyone who has marched and boycotted over the last three years should take credit for it. Governments were dragged to this position by ordinary people who refused to accept local complicity in Israel’s genocide. Ed Miliband has finally admitted at the despatch box what Palestinians have been saying for decades; that ethnic cleansing is being carried out in the West Bank.”
"British and Irish governments alike must now be honest that this is Israeli state policy, rather than the work of rogue settler terrorists. Tel Aviv approved over 12,000 new homes in the occupied West Bank this year, with $431 million handed to 34 new settlements and soldiers standing guard while mobs storm villages and bulldozers level homes in Nablus and Ramallah. Britain and other western states should now go the rest of the way: full sanctions on the Israeli state and a full arms embargo. There will be predictable practical difficulties about how to tell settlement produce from Israeli produce. The only logical conclusion is a comprehensive ban.”
"Netanyahu and his ministers should be in the dock at The Hague, and then sent to a prison cell. Instead, they’re lecturing London about grave miscalculations, while Trump's ambassador threatens British firms for the crime of complying with international law. This bully behaviour should be treated with the contempt it deserves.”
"There can be no welcome for Donald Trump in Ireland this week. The man who has armed and bankrolled the slaughter in Gaza should be met by the largest protests this island can mobilise, north and south.”
"Components made here end up in the Israeli war machine. Local weapons manufacturers and firms embroiled in the F-35 supply chain are sustained by public money and Invest NI support. The Executive can't pass motions of sympathy for Gaza while bolstering the supply chain that kills Palestinians. It's time to build on this momentum, and end our local complicity in this slaughter."