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Follow Us on TwitterScottish county council passes resolution to “resist … action that gives political or economic support” to Israel 22Mar13 March 22, 2013
The Electronic Intifada - 20 March 2013
Clackmannanshire county, Scotland: A motion was passed on 14 March by the county council condemning Israel’s occupation and resolving to “to resist, insofar as legislative considerations permit, any action that gives political or economic support to the State of Israel.”
The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign posted on its website that the motion “was passed nem con by a meeting of the full Council, with only three abstentions (one Labour, one SNP, and the lone Tory).”
The full motion reads:
Clackmannanshire Council condemns the Government of Israel for its continuing illegal occupation of Palestine’s East Jerusalem and the West Bank and for its continuing illegal blockade of Gaza.
Clackmannanshire Council welcomes the decision of the United Nations on 29 November 2012 to grant “non member observer State” to Palestine.
However, for the people of Palestine, the suffering of the last 64 years continues as the Government of Israel continues to ignore and breach international law. Just as individual sanctions against apartheid in South Africa led ultimately to its demise there, so individual and collective sanctions against the state of Israel will end apartheid and suffering in Palestine.
Clackmannanshire Council therefore resolves to resist, insofar as legislative considerations permit, any action that gives political or economic support to the State of Israel.
In December 2010, the city council of Stirling, Scotland, voted for a comprehensive boycott campaign.
University of Dundee students vote to cut ties with British-Danish security firm G4S
Dundee, Scotland: In other news from Scotland, the Dundee University Students Association (DUSA) voted overwhelmingly in favor of a motion to sever ties with G4S, the British-Danish private security firm which contracts with Israeli prisons, checkpoints and settlements.
The motion, which was passed on 26 February, states, in part:
DUSA believes:
- That fundamental human rights and international law should be acknowledged and adhered to by states and corporations.
- That our university students association should not, therefore, have any links – commercial or otherwise – to G4S given its complicity in human rights violations.
DUSA resolves:
- To allow any currently existing contract or commercial link to G4S to expire and to outsource from a different service provider.
- To include information on its website – accessible to all students – explaining the nature of its relationship to G4S until, at the earlier, DUSA ends its contracts with the company.
- Not to take out any contract with G4S in the future.
- To call upon the University as a whole to divest from any holdings it may have in G4S.
The Action Palestine Society at the University of Dundee stated in a post:
This move comes as students are increasing pressure across Europe to have their universities recognize G4S as a key corporate beneficiary in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and to cease doing business with the company. In December 2012, the University of Oslo decided to terminate its contract with G4S after a campaign by students of the university’s Palestine Committee.
More recently, in February this year, Queen Mary Students’ Union in London voted overwhelmingly to allow the university’s G4S contract to expire, on the grounds of the company’s profiteering from Israeli war crimes. The vote in DUSA [Dundee University Students Association] is the latest in the growing campaign to boycott G4S.
Thank You.
