In Gaza university buildings have been flattened, schools and hospitals bombed, residential buildings razed to the ground. Palestine-Israel is awash with horrifying brutalities. Precious human lives have been lost, and more are being destroyed by the hour and by the minute. 

Now Israel has declared a medieval siege, collective punishment, which will lead in short order to disease, starvation and deaths on a yet more appalling scale. This is collective punishment, clearly prohibited under the 1949 Geneva Convention – which has been ratified by all UN member states including Israel. Collective punishment constitutes a war crime.

We, the undersigned, deplore the killing of all civilians. We mourn all these losses and feel for the suffering of those bereaved. We also recognise the desperation arising from decade on decade of Palestinian dispossession and humiliation, from an oppressive apartheid system, and from Israeli state-sponsored violence. 

We must be clear: it is the Israeli policy of ruthless repression of Palestinians’ rights and expectations that is the root cause. It closes the door to any prospect of an alternative to this cycle of violence.

The response of the UK and other governments has been to condemn Hamas but exonerate the ultra-right Israeli government. The floodlighting of public buildings in blue and white provides a visible signal of Israel’s impunity, and visual support for an utterly one-sided narrative. Ministers are now talking up the banning of meetings, the criminalisation of pro-Palestinian slogans, and even the outlawing of the use of the Palestinian flag. The fundamentals of free speech in the UK, and of the right to campaign for justice, are being undermined. 

We call on our Government to -

• call out war crimes whoever commits them;
• remove all diplomatic and other support from Israel until it stops its indiscriminate attack and calls off its punitive siege;
• demand the removal of the illegal settlements on the West Bank, and an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and of systematic social and legal discrimination against Palestinians in Israel; and
• cancel its attempts to undermine the non-violent BDS (boycott and divestment) movement.