“THERE is no bigger priority for our party than to build support for the Palestinian people,” Communist Party international secretary Kevan Nelson declared at the party’s 57th Congress today.

Moving an emergency resolution on the crisis in Gaza, Mr Nelson called on the party to build “union solidarity and direct action as we’ve seen in Belgium and Italy, support boycott, divestment and sanctions, mobilise medical aid – and force a change in the position of the British government and its Labour lackeys.”

Mr Nelson warned that the British state was increasingly cracking down on protests in solidarity with Palestine. “Only this morning a demonstration at the Israeli embassy was banned under the Public Order Act.”

In his opening address to the Congress, general secretary Robert Griffiths said the unfolding massacre in Gaza “is not self-defence — it is Israeli state terror.

“What we are witnessing now is a genocidal attack on the Palestinian communities of Gaza and the West Bank, intended, by Netanyahu and his fascist allies, to destroy the Palestinian people as a distinct nationality. And make no mistake, one carried out with the full support and complicity of the British and American governments and of the European Union.”

Mr Griffiths reiterated the Communist Party call for establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel.

“The Israeli ruling class and its corrupt politicians such as Netanyahu intend to make such a two-state solution impossible, by stealing yet more Palestinian land, expanding zionist settlements and destroying Palestinian communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as in Gaza. 

“Their aim is to create a Greater Israel — that is the only kind of single-state solution on the cards in the foreseeable future. So to our friends and allies in the Palestine solidarity movement who imagine that any other kind of single-state solution is possible, we have to say, ‘be careful what you wish for’.

“Only a worldwide intensification of the Boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, rather than any sham peace process, will help force Israel to contemplate a settlement that secures justice,” Mr Griffiths said.