Petition launched to call on Cardiff Council to divest from companies complicit in Israel’s War in Gaza

A petition has been launched by Cardiff Palestine Solidarity Campaign to call on the Cardiff City Council to divest from companies complicit in criminal activity against Palestinians. The objective is to encourage those companies to cut their support for the alleged apartheid Israel regime and its 14 month long war in Gaza which has cost the lives of over 42,000 Palestinians with the tally still rising.

The Cardiff & Vale Council Pension Fund invests £111m in companies actively linked to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian land in Gaza and The West Bank.

Targeting civilians, starving them, stealing their land and forcibly displacing a whole population are all illegal under international law.

Now, everyone living or working in Cardiff can express their view by signing the petition that will be put before city councillors in January for them to act in a simple but effective way.

The human cost of Israel’s war against Palestine

• In July 2024, The Lancet estimated that the total number of Palestinian deaths due to Israel in the previous 9 months had reached 186,000 (The Lancet).
• At least 42,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since Oct 2023, of which over 17,000 were children
• Israel has been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war (FT Oct 2024)
• The war has taken homes and property away from Palestinians, resulting in the forced displacement of 1.9m people in Gaza (total population is 2.2m), allegedly meeting the definition of ethnic cleansing (FT Nov 2023)
• Healthcare has been dismantled in Gaza and “all the components of a society have been destroyed” (Médecins Sans Frontières)
• More bombs have been dropped on Gaza in 13 months than the US dropped on Vietnam in its 20-year war in the 1960s/70s; or the equivalent of 8 Hiroshima bombs (as reported to Senedd MSs by Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh Nov 2024).

‘Israeli actions are illegal’

• In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled as illegal, all Israeli seizing of Palestinian territory since 1967, and that it has no right to sovereignty over the occupied territory (Sovereignty)
• The ICJ has previously ruled in 2024 that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocidal acts in its assault on Gaza, and is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. (ICJ)
• The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has applied for arrest warrants against senior Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  (war criminal)
• Apartheid legislation racially discriminating against non-Jewish citizens has been progressively enacted since 2009, including segregation, forced dispossession, unjust military law and restrictions on freedom of movement (apartheid, Amnesty, Adalah).

What has this got to do with Cardiff City Council?

Every democratic representative body has an interest in abiding by the rules and the international order for resolving conflict. There is a duty on everyone to play a part in echoing and amplifying the daily pleas from Palestinians:

• for an end to the war in Gaza.
• for a just outcome to years of illegal expulsions and the occupation of Palestinian land.

What can we do?

Cardiff CC can make a simple switch of the 3.5% of its total pension fund pot to companies not on the list of those complicit with the Israeli regime. This a call from Palestinian civil society: including the Federation of Trade Unions, political parties, NGOs, Palestinian women, refugee and cultural organisations and many others (Palestinian Civil Society calls for BDS)

All pictures of Gaza credited to Hosny Salah, photographer based in the Gaza Strip.