Gaza Freedom March: Declaration from Cairo
CAIRO, January 1—This morning, a couple of hundred Gaza Freedom March (GFM) participants ringingly endorsed the “Cairo Declaration,” the founding document of a new initiative for deepening opposition to Israel’s apartheid policies and increasing the reach and impact of the Palestine solidarity movement.
Hammered out over the past week by a Gaza Freedom March committee led by the South African delegation, the declaration centers on a plan for recruiting international trade union support for the campaign for boycotts of, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel.
Entitled “End Israeli Apartheid,” the declaration:
- Spells out Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people—from the occupation of the West Bank and the construction of illegal settlements there to the building of the separation wall and the siege of Gaza;
- Identifies Zionist ideology as the fundamental basis for those acts;
- Reaffirms participants’ commitment to Palestinian self-determination, the end of the occupation, “equal rights for all within historic Palestine,” the Palestinian right of return, and the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions; and
- Calls for and commits to working on an international “mass democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement” the call for BDS
mandates it to purchase land for Jewish settlement.
Two of the seven action points are specifically aimed at bringing trade unions into the effort: “campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the occupation and/or the Israeli military industries” and “a systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products involving consumers, workers, and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors.”
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