News

A message from UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings:

The UNI Global Union mission to Palestine and Israel was completed on October 1st. The mission was originally called by the UNI World Executive Committee.

Our mission conducted 5 days of intensive morning-to-night meetings in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel including East Jerusalem, Ramallah and Nablus in the West Bank, and concluded in Tel Aviv. The visit took place just one month after the ceasefire of the war in Gaza.

We met with UNI Global Union affiliates from both Palestine and Israel – the PGFTU and Histadrut respectively. We also met senior officials from the United Nations, ILO, NGOs, peace and human rights groups, leading members of the Palestinian Authority - some of whom have been actively engaged in the peace talks for over 20 years - as well as the Labour Party in Israel.

We were able to observe the intricacy and complexity of the situation and conversations which spanned 3000 years of history. We journeyed through the West Bank and down to the war-torn Gaza region. We were not able to enter Gaza itself but met with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society and received a briefing on the shocking scale of the impact of the war on life and infrastructure - more than 2000 lives were lost in the Gaza Strip.

We saw the separation wall, checkpoints and the increasing number of settlements. We met with traumatised communities in Israel who had been subject to daily rocket attacks.

The mission coincided with the United Nations General Assembly and the speeches of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, which attracted global attention and highlighted the tense divide. The desperation of the people of Gaza was tragically displayed by the loss of life at sea of hundreds of people attempting to escape the region by boat.

The PGFTU relayed all of the hardships facing Palestinian workers, their troublesome minimum wage campaign, their negotiations to build a new social insurance scheme and how difficult it is to cope with all of the disruptions to worker mobility and decent work.

During our visit, Histadrut launched a series of rolling strike actions against government policy across a range of sectors from transportation to public and postal services. Histadrut is under new leadership, is committed to union growth and has won a series of landmark judgements to defeat union busting.

I would like to thank the members of the mission who gave their time to participate. For President Joe de Bruyn, Vice President Ann Selin and UNI Africa President Bones Skulu, it was a first visit to the region and they witnessed the intensity of the situation and the strongly held opinions of the different people whom we met.

The mission also included Christy Hoffman, Mike Sunderland and myself. We encountered anger, frustration and anxiety provoked by the enduring nature and high human cost of the conflict. We also encountered a deep yearning for peace and a growing frustration at a lack of progress towards a peace settlement. There is a sense of drifting apart and strategic reassessments being made about what options remain.

At moments we saw evidence of a collapse of hope brought about by what was felt to be an endless conflict with deep concern over the implications of a generation of young Palestinians without work and with no prospects for a better life. The third war in Gaza in six years, the continuing occupation and subjugation of people, the fragmentation and displacement in people’s lives, settlement growth, and daily tensions in Jerusalem and the West Bank fuels an already charged atmosphere. The mission is convinced that a “two state solution” remains the best outcome of a peace process. It is critical that a meaningful, timetabled, continuous peace process begins now.

The secretariat is working on a report and follow up points for circulation to affiliates and on a new composite motion for the Cape Town World Congress to be discussed by the pre-meeting of the Congress resolutions committee on 21-22 October.

Parallel to the mission, UNI Global Union was also represented by Neil Anderson, Mongi Abderrahim and Innocent Tsumbu in a series of activities in Jordan. These included a UNI Post and Logistics workshop, talks with our Jordanian affiliates, a global union federations meeting to discuss activities throughout the Middle East and North Africa region, and culminated in the founding congress of the ITUC Arab Region, the ATUC. Our presence enabled direct talks with union centres and affiliates from throughout the region.