A REVEREND has called for the UK government to sanction Israel during a talk in Worcester, in which he recalled his recent trip to the West Bank.
Rev David Haslam is a minister and long-time anti-apartheid activist from the Methodist Church in Evesham.
He witnessed the impact of illegal settlers harassing and forcing Palestinian communities out of their homes, describing it as a “creeping genocide.”
‘Stories from the West Bank’, organised by the Worcester Palestine Solidarity Campaign at St. Andrew’s Church in Worcester, began with a buffet of Palestinian food and exhibition of traditional memorabilia, followed by an illustrated talk with Rev Haslam and an open discussion.
Images of checkpoints, apartheid walls, destroyed farmland, and even stolen water pipes presented by Rev Haslam showed a harsh reality of life for Palestinians.
One stop on the trip was at a Bedouin village, where a water pipe previously belonging to the Palestinian community there had been extracted from the aquifer and pumped out to illegal Israeli settlements instead.
Locals now have no access to the water, and are forced to ship it in.
Showing images of the surrounding areas, Rev Haslam said: “Houses were already deserted, especially those nearest the road, because that’s where the settlers come and harass people.”
Rev Haslam also visited Jenin Refugee Camp, where last year, 19,000 residents were forcibly removed with no hope of return.
He spoke to the women currently being housed there, living in a hall fitting 500 people into just 77 single rooms.
“It’s just deliberate torture, mental and psychological torture,” he said.
The trip last November was organised by Global Kairos network for justice, an international Christian movement for the freedom and dignity of Palestinians with representatives from 23 countries.
At the end of the talk, Worcestershire locals signed a petition sent to Yvette Cooper, the UK Foreign Secretary, which calls for diplomatic, trade and financial sanctions on the Israeli government and all forcibly displaced persons to be reinstated in their homes.
Rev Haslam said: “We do not believe that the state of Palestine is a possibility without serious sanctions, as with South Africa.
[Sanctions] will bring about change. At the moment our government and other Western governments are utterly pathetic in this respect.”
