Plaid Cymru MPs call for Israel boycott

Plaid Cymru's 4 MPs person backed calls for a sporting and economical boycott of Israel implicit the warfare successful Gaza.

The party's Westminster radical is supporting a question astatine the party's league which calls Israel an "apartheid state" and accuses it of "genocide, taste cleansing and warfare crimes".

Plaid members volition determine whether the enactment should endorse the calls erstwhile they conscionable successful Cardiff later.

The Palestinians' apical envoy to the UK, Husam Zomlot, volition besides code the league connected Saturday afternoon.

In an interrogation with the BBC, enactment person Rhun ap Iorwerth hinted astatine a quality of sentiment connected the matter, declining to corroborate whether helium personally endorsed the motion.

The question projected by the party's members successful Ceredigion condemns "in the strongest imaginable terms" the "murders of tens of thousands of Palestinians, including implicit 10,000 children, by the authorities of Israel".

It criticises the "violence perpetrated by Hamas against guiltless radical successful Israel" but says the "increasingly oppressive apartheid authorities maintained by the Israeli authorities makes a two-state solution little apt to bring astir a conscionable peace".

The question says the UK authorities should "expel the Israeli ambassador", prohibition arms income to Israel, and that each Plaid members should enactment an "economic and taste boycott".

That would see Welsh nationalist sports teams boycotting the country.

It besides says councils should divest from companies that "support the apartheid Israeli state".

Ap Iorwerth said Israel had acted contrary to planetary instrumentality but declined to enactment calls for a boycott himself.

"Individuals volition instrumentality antithetic positions connected matters similar boycotts," helium said.

"Those attacks a twelvemonth agone were appalling, and we condemn them. We request to spot the merchandise of surviving hostages, but we besides request to telephone retired the authorities of Israel."

About 1,200 radical - mostly Israeli civilians - were killed successful the Hamas 7 October attacks.

Since then, immoderate 42,000 radical person been killed arsenic portion of Israel's retaliatory violative successful Gaza, according to the Hamas-run wellness ministry.

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

It said it maintained "an institutionalised authorities of oppression and domination of the Palestinian colonisation for the payment of Jewish Israelis".

At the time, Israel's overseas ministry had accused Amnesty of recycling "lies, inconsistencies, and unfounded assertions that originate from well-known anti-Israeli hatred organisations".