Plaid Cymru MPs call for Israel boycott over Gaza

Plaid Cymru’s four MPs have backed calls for a sporting and economic boycott of Israel over the war in Gaza.

The party’s Westminster group is supporting a motion at the party’s conference which calls Israel an “apartheid state” and accuses it of “genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes”.

Plaid members will decide whether the party should endorse the calls when they meet in Cardiff later.

The Palestinians’ top envoy to the UK, Husam Zomlot, will also address the conference on Saturday afternoon.

In an interview with the BBC, party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth hinted at a difference of opinion on the matter, declining to confirm whether he personally endorsed the motion.

The motion proposed by the party’s members in Ceredigion condemns “in the strongest possible terms” the “murders of tens of thousands of Palestinians, including over 10,000 children, by the state of Israel”.

It criticises the “violence perpetrated by Hamas against innocent people in Israel” but says the “increasingly oppressive apartheid regime maintained by the Israeli government makes a two-state solution less likely to bring about a just peace”.

The motion says the UK government should “expel the Israeli ambassador”, ban arms sales to Israel, and that all Plaid members should support an “economic and cultural boycott”.

That would include Welsh national sports teams boycotting the country.

It also says councils should divest from companies that “support the apartheid Israeli state”.

Ap Iorwerth said Israel had acted contrary to international law but declined to support calls for a boycott himself.

“Individuals will take different positions on matters like boycotts,” he said.

“Those attacks a year ago were appalling, and we condemn them. We need to see the release of surviving hostages, but we also need to call out the state of Israel.”

About 1,200 people – mostly Israeli civilians – were killed in the Hamas 7 October attacks.

Since then, some 42,000 people have been killed as part of Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The Plaid motion cites Amnesty International, which in 2022 said that Israel’s laws, policies and practices against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories amounted to apartheid.

It said it maintained “an institutionalised regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis”.

At the time, Israel’s foreign ministry had accused Amnesty of recycling “lies, inconsistencies, and unfounded assertions that originate from well-known anti-Israeli hate organisations”.

Palestinians have accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, which the country has denied.

The UN human rights special rapporteur Francesa Albanese has said she believes Israel has committed “acts of genocide”, while the International Court of Justice ruled in January that the country should “take all measures to prevent genocidal acts”.

Luke Fletcher, Plaid Cymru Senedd member for South Wales West, told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast he wanted to hear the debate on the motion on Saturday.

He said he was “undecided” on the matter of a boycott.

But he added: “I think I’m quite clear that we’ve been calling for a ceasefire for over a year now, since the start of the conflict, it comes to a point where you have to start, I think, looking at sanctions in order to get to the goal which we all have which is peace in the region.”

At conference, Fletcher will set out the party’s plans to grow the Welsh economy by establishing a new national development agency and a reform development bank, vowing to reform business rates for small and medium-sized businesses.